


Winning is Easy (Living is Harder)

by madsthenerdygirl



Series: i carry your heart with me [i carry it in my heart] [6]
Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Against Polyamory Specifically, And Not Very Clever, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Bigotry & Prejudice, But at Least Nobody Dies This Time?, Don't Worry There is Still a Lot of Smut, F/M, House Husband Wyatt Logan, I am Vague on How Rittenhouse was Vanquished, Intense Descriptions of PTSD, Kid Fic, Lots of Adjustment, M/M, Multi, Not Time Travel Plot Focused, Panic Attacks, Post-Bunker, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, These Babies Have So Much Angst and Baggage, Trash ot3, adjusting to civilian life, because I am lazy, domestic fic, relationship focused, the war is over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2019-10-07 14:33:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 39,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17367668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madsthenerdygirl/pseuds/madsthenerdygirl
Summary: The war for time is over.Their private war is just beginning.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> And so begins the final installment in this series. I've long wanted to do a story that answers the question "but what happens after the bad guy is defeated?" and so here we are. Thank you all for coming on this long journey with me and I hope you feel this quieter, more introspective, domestic fic is a fitting end for our trash babies.

Lucy watched from a distance.

The police were escorting the last vestiges of Rittenhouse down from the courthouse steps, into the cars that would take them to prison. Wyatt was back at the newest safe house, recovering from a stab wound, Jiya was still in the hospital and Rufus had elected to stay with her, and Mason had decided to watch it all on his television. Amy didn’t want to be anywhere near Rittenhouse people, and Dave had decided that someone should be around to look after Amy and Wyatt, one panicking and the other injured.

But Lucy had wanted to be there.

Flynn stood behind her, his tall frame helping to shield her from the crowd. Denise was in that crowd somewhere, making sure the men got thrown into the deepest hole she could find. Denise liked to play by the books, but when the books said that these men would go to cushy prisons where they could play tennis and conduct business on the side… Flynn had persuaded her to put them somewhere else instead.

Well, he’d persuaded her after three weeks of arguing about it.

Then, just like that, it was over. The few stragglers rounded up, prosecuted, sent to prison. The rest erased, never a part of Rittenhouse, undone in the past. Emma herself—

Lucy forcefully didn’t think about it.

“There’s nothing more to see,” Flynn said gently. He put a hand between her shoulder blades.

Lucy watched as the protestors, the reporters, the police, all of the crowd started to disperse.

It was over.

She took a deep breath. She’d thought it would feel like freedom but instead it felt like too-thin oxygen, a head rush, leaving her almost dizzy enough to pass out.

“Lucy,” Flynn repeated.

She stepped back and to the side, which pressed her up against his side, his arm going around her shoulders. “Right. Right. Wyatt will be waiting.”

The drive back was quiet. It didn’t feel… anticlimactic wasn’t the right word, no. But it felt… heavy.

What were they supposed to do now?

Flynn noted her silence but didn’t try to talk to her as they drove to the safe house. He just opened the door for her, took off her coat when they got inside, and fetched her a glass of water.

That was the good thing about Flynn. Well, one of the many good things. He knew when to be silent. Wyatt was good for filling that silence with quips, with reassurances, with chatter, drowning out the voices in her head. But Flynn knew when to just sit in the silence with her.

Speaking of Wyatt, her other husband wasn’t asleep as she’d hoped. He was propped up on pillows in the bed, mindlessly flipping through the pages of a history book.

That was all history would be to her now. Books. Facts. Dead worlds with pages as the epitaphs.

In a way she was sad about it. Yes, she realized, she was sad. Mourning. For all that she’d complained about this safe house they’d had to move to and the bunker before it and traveling in a ricocheting tin can and the misogyny and racism and all the rest… she’d liked getting to see historical times and places. Meeting her various heroes.

Now that was all over and done with.

The war was over.

“Hey.” Wyatt set the book aside as they entered. “How was it?”

“You didn’t watch the news?” Flynn asked, taking off his shoes.

Wyatt shook his head. “I still think—jail’s too good for them. I knew I’d just get… I’d get angry.”

Lucy crawled into the bed and rested her head on his shoulder. Wyatt looked at her, then at Flynn, who shook his head.

“You want a massage?” Wyatt asked. “Coffee?”

Lucy shook her head.

Flynn kissed Wyatt’s temple and then lay down on the bed. Lucy knew she should ask them what they should plan, now. What their next steps were.

But she just couldn’t… she felt numb.

“It doesn’t feel real,” Wyatt commented.

She looked at him.

Wyatt cleared his throat. “It’s, um, y’know. When I fought over… when I was in the army, in Delta, the war didn’t end when I went home. It’s still, was still, going on. I wasn’t there for… for the end of it.”

“It’s empty,” Flynn said.

Lucy had almost forgotten—Flynn had been there for the end of his war. His first war, anyway.

“You’re tempted to go find the next fight, and the next, because anything else feels foreign again, and you think you’re at least picking your battles this time and fighting the right fights.” Flynn shrugged.

She didn’t want to find another fight. She wanted to be okay with no longer fighting. She wanted to go back to the person that she was before all of this, but that person was long gone.

“What do we do now?” she asked. She looked at Flynn, hoping to be flung a rope, shown a guiding star.

Flynn’s expression was calm in the way that an ocean was calm—deceptively so, hiding depths. “That’s a good question.”


	2. Chapter 2

Flynn hadn’t thought that they honestly had all that much stuff in this place.

This wasn’t a home, exactly. It was where they lived but it wasn’t where they wanted to be by any stretch of the imagination. It was almost a prison in a way. A place they couldn’t leave except with permission and even then only for missions.

But now that the time had come to move out, he was staring down at boxes upon boxes of shit.

A lot of it was Lucy’s collection of history books, the margins filled with scribbles and passages highlighted, pages dogeared. But there were other things, too. The historical clothes, most of which were going to be donated to a costuming company. Their regular clothes, including the ugly scarves that Denise had made them and Flynn’s black leather jacket and Wyatt’s favorite pair of jeans and all the sweaters Lucy had stolen from both of them over time. The quilt that Wyatt had seen on a mission and had bought and smuggled back on the Lifeboat. The photo albums. The board games to keep them from going insane.

Yeah, there was a lot more than he’d thought.

It was an odd feeling, realizing he’d built a life during all this. He knew that he had in the sense that he now had two spouses that he loved beyond comprehension, but materially speaking—he’d left all of his stuff behind when he’d fled his home. It was all confiscated.

Denise was doing what she could to track down what had happened to it, but there were some things Flynn was pretty sure had been consigned to a landfill. Maria’s college diploma. Iris’s baby teeth. His wedding photo.

He’d thought it was all gone, and his old life was, but somehow he’d acquired stuff, mementos, all over again without realizing it.

It made his chest go tight. Oddly enough it made this new life feel real. What he had with Lucy and Wyatt was real, it wasn’t some purgatory, limbo state of being. He had a life and he had people to share it with and he had the mementos to prove it and he was going to spend the rest of his time on this earth with them.

Lucy entered the room. She’d been practically silent the past few days as they packed everything up, helping Rufus with his and Jiya’s things since Jiya wasn’t able to be there herself.

Wyatt figured it was the Emma thing. Flynn figured it was more than that.

“You all good, _cher_?” he asked.

Lucy nodded, examining the boxes.

“We have everything,” he told her. “Moving van’ll be here in twenty minutes.”

They didn’t have a set place to stay yet. Flynn had scheduled some appointments with a realtor to look at houses in the Bay Area since Lucy was going to try and get her job back at Stanford. Flynn had pointed out that it might be better if they started in an entirely new place, but Lucy had figured it would be easier to beg for a job from people who already knew her, and besides, she liked the area.

He just hoped her experiences with her mother hadn’t soured it too much.

At least they didn’t have to worry about finances. Carol Preston had left a sizable inheritance to Lucy so long as they could actually provide proof of death—Denise was taking care of that—and Mason had promised he’d be providing for them all since despite all the timeline changes his fortune had yet to be touched.

“Thank God for offshore accounts and Switzerland,” he’d said once, raising up a glass of bourbon.

Amy entered. “Hey Luce… oh, hey Garcia.”

He started a little. He’d have to get used to people calling him by his first name again. He’d been Garcia before, in his old life, but that man felt like such a completely different person that he almost didn’t recognize himself, looking back.

It didn’t scare him as much as it probably should have. After all, he’d already done it once—the Garcia Flynn who’d gone into war at age fifteen had died there, and the man who’d emerged was entirely different. After a while, snakes got used to shedding their skins.

With the Time Team, and before that with Karl and the others, he’d been Flynn. He was still mostly Flynn now, except to Lucy and Wyatt, and then to Amy because Amy had decided that Flynn was not only her brother-in-law but her adopted sibling and would metaphorically cling to him like a tenacious barnacle.

He did like his first name being used, but perhaps… it had become something intimate, to use his first name. Perhaps he should introduce himself to people simply as ‘Flynn’ and have them use that to address him. Garcia now felt like something only those he trusted, those he loved, could use with him.

“Hey, Amy,” he replied. “Taking a break from all of those pandering essays?”

Amy had decided that she wanted to go back to college. She wanted to get into politics and, quote, ‘make sure no other scumbags get the same idea that Rittenhouse did’.

“I was just going to ask my dear darling perfect sister here if she’d give this one application a looksee,” Amy said. She laid her head on Lucy’s shoulder and gave her sister a winning smile. “Please?”

Lucy nodded, giving a fond yet exasperated eye roll. Amy took Lucy’s hand and just about dragged her from the room.

Flynn occupied himself helping the men and Denise load up the moving van once it arrived. “You know what you’ll be doing?” he asked Dave.

“Denise wants me to work with her,” Dave replied. “So long as it’s where Amy is, I’m good.”

“Jiya and I are still going to be at Mason Industries,” Rufus said. “Once she recovers.”

“Oh no, and here I was hoping all the time travel and near-death experiences had scared you off,” Mason said dryly.

Flynn knew it was to cover up his fear. Mason had been underground for a couple of years now. His stocks had taken quite a dive. Who knew how much of Mason Industries there would be to come back to?

“You’ll find a way,” Wyatt said, hefting a box into the van. “You’re Connor Mason.”

Flynn’s chest warmed, watching him. Wyatt had come a long way from the angry, scared, lost, selfish man he’d first met stepping out of the Lifeboat.

Wyatt caught Flynn looking at him. “What?”

Flynn just shrugged, smiling at him. “Nothing.”

Wyatt rolled his eyes, going a bit pink, but stepped over and rested his head on Flynn’s shoulder, tucking his face into Flynn’s neck. Flynn automatically put an arm around Wyatt’s back, anchoring him.

Wyatt had said that in his original timeline he’d been too scared and ashamed to let Flynn touch him when others were around, but Flynn had no experience with that in this timeline. Wyatt’s love language was physical contact all the way (Lucy’s, to nobody’s surprise, was verbal affirmation) and he was always looking for the flimsiest excuse to touch either of his spouses.

“I think that’s everything,” Dave said, eyeing the van. “What’s it say about you when there’s eight of you and all your shit fits in one van?”

“You’re not hoarders?” Rufus replied.

“I’ll inform Denise,” Mason said.

“It’s finally done,” Wyatt whispered.

Flynn nodded. Yes. It was.

 

* * *

 

They visited Jiya on their way out of the safe house.

She still looked pale, dark smudges under her eyes, but she sat up and grinned at them as they entered. “Hey, if it isn’t my favorite sex fiends.”

“How’s the staff treating you?” Wyatt asked. “Are you getting all the gossip?”

“Hospitals don’t actually work like TV,” Flynn said. “You’re not going to find all of the doctors banging each other.”

Lucy sat on the edge of the bed. “How are you?” she asked.

Jiya gestured at the monitors. “Better. I don’t need an MRI every day anymore. They’re trying a new medication for me. All that jazz.”

“Any idea when you’ll be out?” Wyatt asked.

Flynn stepped on his foot. Wyatt yelped.

“Doctors say another couple weeks,” Jiya answered. She gave a hopeful smile. “Plenty of time for Dave’s proposal.”

Dave was planning to propose to Amy and had recruited basically everyone to help him. Lucy had tried to explain that Amy would be fine with finding the ring in a Cracker Jack box or something but Dave was, to quote Wyatt, ‘one of those stupid old school romantics’.

Lucy had refrained from pointing out that Wyatt and Flynn had once gotten into a competition of who could be the most romantic, up to and including sending one another massive bouquets of roses and piles of chocolate boxes.

“I’m sure you will be,” she said out loud. “If you’re doing so well…”

“Jiya’s a trooper,” Flynn said. “She’ll be out before we know it.”

Jiya wiped at her eyes a little. “Ugh, sorry. I cry so easily nowadays.”

Lucy took her hand. “It’s okay. We’re going to hold a big party when you get out.”

“In your fancy new home?” Jiya said hopefully.

“We’ll see.” They still had to go look at their options. The idea of buying a house elated and terrified her. “You’ll need to plan for a week just with Rufus first.”

“Trust me, he won’t be coming up for air,” Jiya vowed. “I don’t know about the doctors but they’re real damn strict about their patients not getting any sex. I’m losing my mind over here.”

Flynn, who had rather come to view Jiya as a pseudo-daughter (not that he’d ever admit it out loud) looked like he wanted to brain himself on the monitor to forget he’d heard that.

A nurse came in. “Visiting hours are over.”

Jiya groaned like a teenager told to do her homework. Lucy squeezed her hand. “We’ll be back,” she promised.

“You’d better. And bring cards or something.”

Wyatt scrubbed a hand across his face as they walked out of the lobby. “You think she’ll really get out?”

Jiya’s visions, and her deliberate use of them, had taken a toll. Such a toll that Denise had stuck her in the hospital under an assumed name despite the risk from Rittenhouse. She’d be fine for a while, and then get worse again.

“She’s been fine for a month now,” Flynn said. “She can deliberately tap into a vision, that means she can control it. She just needs the right medication and to meditate or something.”

“But…”

“It’s the price we’re paying, Wyatt,” Lucy snapped, frustration rising in her like a hungry lion. “It’s better to be positive.”

She pretended she didn’t see the alarmed look Wyatt shot Flynn. “Let’s go meet with that realtor,” Flynn said, putting a hand on Wyatt’s shoulder to keep him from saying anything. “Sound good?”

Lucy nodded. Sure. Fine. “Yes.”

 

* * *

 

Wyatt fucking loved having a house.

For one thing, they didn’t run out of hot water because hey, they weren’t in a Cold War era safe house and they weren’t sharing this place with another five people. For another, actual closet space. For another, proper lighting and a big kitchen and a backyard.

They spent the first week figuring out what they wanted to paint the walls, searching for furniture, sorting through everything. Lucy’s history books were in piles everywhere since they didn’t have bookshelves, they ate takeout constantly, and slept on just a mattress.

It was fantastic.

The sex probably helped with that, although Wyatt hoped Lucy didn’t think she was fooling either of them with how much she was jumping them. Lucy used sex to cover up or avoid her feelings, she had from the beginning, and personally Wyatt knew jack shit about how to bring this up to her this time. Now that the war was over they were all struggling with settling back in. Wyatt had no fucking clue what he was going to do for a job. But Lucy seemed especially lost.

Maybe it was because unlike himself and Flynn, she wasn’t a soldier. As much as it sucked, he was used to shifting between war and civilian life and all the shit that came with that. Lucy wasn’t. And then there’d been how Emma had died…

But hey, lots of sex, he wasn’t complaining. They broke in that new mattress like nobody’s business. Lucy pinned Flynn down with a hand on his chest and rode him, frantic and panting and ferocious, until Flynn was choking out her name and she was slumping to the side and Wyatt had to catch her. The first time Flynn fucked him in the shower Wyatt had nearly brained himself on the faucet when his legs gave out because holy _shit_.

Also, what was the point of having such a nice, large kitchen if they didn’t fuck on the counter at least once? Even if it did pull a little at his stitches. He’d gotten shot and blown up plenty of times by now but of course it was a fucking stab wound that had nearly done him in.

He tried not to mention it, though. Lucy’s face every time she saw it was… worrisome. As was her apathy towards decorating the house.

“Do you think we should get her to someone?” Wyatt whispered to Flynn one night when Lucy was asleep on the couch and Flynn was helping him clean up dinner.

“Let’s see if she gets her job back first,” Flynn replied, his voice that low rumble it took on when he was trying to be soothing. “She needs something to focus her.”

“And helping us create a home isn’t focusing her?”

Flynn put his hand on Wyatt’s shoulder. “Hey. She’s not a soldier. How bad were you after your first tour?”

Wyatt deflated, nodding.

He just… they were moving on, physically. They had a house. They were finding jobs. Dave had proposed and Amy was running around like a madwoman to plan the wedding (despite all attempts to assure her that it wasn’t necessary).

But Lucy didn’t seem able to, and he didn’t know how to talk about it or bring it up without it being… without it just causing a fight and nothing really getting resolved.

“We have to be patient,” Flynn said.

“When do we get too patient,” Wyatt replied. “When do we miss our chance to get her the help she needs?”

Flynn glanced over at Lucy’s sleeping form. “All right. But let’s see if the job helps her first.”

Wyatt rested his forehead on Flynn’s shoulder and Flynn wrapped his arms around his waist. “I should’ve seen it coming,” he whispered. “If I hadn’t—then she wouldn’t have—”

“It’s not your fault,” Flynn growled. “Lucy makes her own choices.”

“She did it because of me. Because I was hurt.”

“She didn’t do it just for you, _Liebling_. And you and I both know that someone can tell you to take the shot all they want but it’s your finger on the trigger. If we want to help her then we can’t take her free will away from her.”

He knew it was illogical. But he still couldn’t help it—a part of him still felt like it was his fault. If only he’d moved sooner, seen it coming, dodged, blocked, if he hadn’t run in at all—

But they weren’t time travelers anymore and what happened in the past stayed there. They only had the here and now.

And the here and now was focused on helping his wife.


	3. Chapter 3

Wyatt gripped harder on the handle of the shopping car than was strictly necessary. Sue him, he needed something to ground him.

Flynn was a few feet ahead, dutifully reading the nutritional information on the back of the pasta jar. Wyatt raised an eyebrow at him. Flynn was the cook out of the three of them but it wasn’t until they’d gotten out of the bunker that Wyatt had realized just how seriously Flynn took his shopping.

Wyatt glanced around. This was… still something he was getting used to. Being out in the open. Doing things, couple things, around other people. When he was with just Lucy it wasn’t any better because he knew people would assume they were a straight couple and, well, no. Just because Flynn wasn’t there didn’t mean he didn’t count.

He needed something to distract himself. “So, when are you going to look at the office?”

“Tomorrow, after I drop Lucy off at Stanford.”

Lucy was going in for her job interview tomorrow, to see if Stanford would let her back in. She had a… modified story about what she’d been doing for the past three years to explain her sudden disappearance, namely: ‘my mom kidnapped me and I was in a cult until Homeland got me out’. She’d been going over it with Denise constantly, paranoid.

Wyatt just hoped that this job would give Lucy the distraction and focus that she needed. “Do you want me to come with?”

“Sure, I could use a second pair of eyes.” Flynn decided on a pasta sauce and added it to the cart.

Flynn had started a private security firm with a few friends when he’d learned Lorena was pregnant. It had been pretty successful, and had been what had gotten him listed as an NSA asset. He’d decided he wanted to do that again, since he was good at it and still had some contacts and, well, since he’d been cleared of all terrorism charges…

Wyatt had no fucking clue what he was going to do with his life. First of all, he didn’t legally exist. Denise was still working on that. Second of all, he had no clue what he even wanted to do. He could, he supposed, work with Flynn. But he’d been a soldier in one form or another all of his adult life and as a kid he hadn’t really thought about the future and now…

“Earth to Wyatt,” Flynn said, casually slinging his arm around Wyatt’s shoulders as he looked at the grocery list.

Wyatt flushed instinctively, glancing at another shopper, an older woman, as she walked by. She didn’t even give them a second glance.

Wyatt relaxed a little.

“She doesn’t care,” Flynn murmured, not looking up from the list. Flynn was old-fashioned in a lot of ways, and that included writing his grocery list down on a piece of paper instead of on his phone. “It’s San Francisco.”

“It’s hard not to—it’s just my first thought.”

Flynn hummed, then tucked the grocery list back into his pocket. “Looks like we have everything except peanut butter.” He kissed Wyatt’s temple and then pulled away. “And if they do care, then I’ll handle it.”

Wyatt had no doubt that Flynn would. Flynn never gave a damn what other people thought but if somebody made either Wyatt or Lucy so much as avert their eyes Flynn would be ready to throw punches.

“Do you have any idea what you want to do yet?” Flynn asked, casually, as they got to the register and bagged their groceries.

Wyatt shook his head, his stomach churning. He felt bad that he was going to be the only one not pulling his weight around the house, so to speak. If Lucy had a job and Flynn had one, what was he supposed to do? Just sit around and watch TV? No way. He was going to do his part.

As they walked out to the car, Flynn said, “You’ll figure it out.”

“It feels like I’m starting life over,” Wyatt admitted. Not just with the whole post-Rittenhouse thing, but with… all of it. He was in a new city, with two new partners, he was living life as a polyamorous, bisexual man, he was looking for a new profession… literally nothing of what he was doing now was the same as it had been for the first thirty-odd years of his life, and sometimes he still felt like he’d accidentally stepped into someone else’s life, an alternate world, the life he might have had.

But he got to have that life, and he was holding on with both hands to it because he was a lucky son of a bitch and he was aware of that, thanks.

“We all are,” Flynn said quietly—not chastising him, just commiserating. Letting him know he wasn’t alone.

Wyatt nodded, dropping the groceries on the ground as a sudden wave of—he didn’t even know what, something deep and scared and sad—and grabbed Flynn, holding on with all of his might.

“Hey.” Flynn wrapped his arms around him and Wyatt tucked his face into Flynn’s neck, his fingers digging into the back of Flynn’s shoulder blades. “Hey, _Liebling_ , it’s all right.”

“I don’t know…” Wyatt swallowed. “I don’t know.” That was all he could think to say.

“We don’t know,” Flynn acknowledged. “But we’ll figure it out. Okay?”

Wyatt nodded. “Okay.” It was so stupid, but sometimes he just… wanted to hold onto Flynn and Lucy so tightly and never let go. Even though time travel was done, even though Rittenhouse was done, it still felt like some morning he’d wake up and one or both of them would be gone again.

“Let’s go home, yeah? See Lucy? Have dinner, watch some stupid TV?”

Wyatt nodded. “Yeah.” He smiled a little, thinking… they had a home, now. A proper home. That was something.

 

* * *

 

Lucy tried not to fidget in the chair as William scrubbed a hand over his face. “You realize this is a bit… fantastical of a story, Lucy.”

She nodded. “I’m aware, sir.”

The last time she’d been in this office at Stanford, she’d been asking for them to consider her for tenure. Now she was here once again, begging without trying to make it sound like that was what she was doing.

Fun.

But she needed something. She was going stir crazy in the house, as much as she loved having a place of their own, above ground, with proper windows and air flow. And she did still love history, even if her perceptions of it and her feelings of responsibility towards it had changed now.

“If you look,” she said, indicating the papers she’d given him, the ones now sitting on his desk like fallen banners, “Agent Christopher of Homeland Security has corroborated all of my statements. And you can look up my mother’s death certificate and all the rest if you’d like. Or speak to Connor Mason, my mother’s cult bombed his facilities—”

“We all heard about the explosion at Mason Industries, yes,” William said wearily. “I won’t lie, Lucy, you were one of our best and brightest. You had real potential. It was a shock to all of us when you disappeared. And… there were those in the history department who said your email request for six weeks of vacation didn’t sound like you.”

“My mother wrote that.”

“So you’ve said.”

“You have to believe me,” Lucy insisted, gripping the handles of the chair. Once, she would have swallowed her anger. Once, she would have told herself she didn’t really deserve this post anyway. Once, she would have let her insecurity control her.

Not anymore.

“I deserve to be back here,” she said, gritting her teeth. “My mother took everything from me, her cult took everything from me, snatched me away from my life, from this job, from the career I care more about than anything else. I don’t care if you want to believe me or not, because you _will_ believe me. Because I’m telling the truth and I know what I deserve and I deserve to have back the life that I lost. I will be at the bottom of the totem pole, I know that. I will take the crappy eight a.m. classes, I will take the freshman seminars no one wants, I will do whatever it takes. But I’m here, and I’m asking for nothing more than what I’m owed.”

William blinked at her rapidly, like she’d shone a bright light in his face. “I must admit, Lucy, your experiences didn’t diminish your backbone.”

“I like to think it’s how I grew one,” Lucy replied, smiling sardonically.

William shrugged. “Well, I’ll have to get permission from the rest of the faculty, see what everyone thinks but… if you ask me, I don’t think there will be much objection. You were missed.”

Lucy settled back into the chair, her stomach finally settling.. “Thank you.”

 

* * *

 

When she got out to the parking lot, Flynn and Wyatt were waiting for her by the car.

Well, ‘waiting’ was a bit of a broad definition. Flynn was currently daring Wyatt to hotwire the Mustang belonging to some pretentious trust fund business major who’d parked a few spots away.

They both stopped when they saw her. Wyatt’s face was obviously, heartbreakingly full of hope, while Flynn’s was more guarded, cautious, like he was ready to yank tissues out of his pocket for her.

Lucy struggled to keep her expression neutral as she walked up to them, managing to hold that expression until she got close—and her face broke out into a grin. She jumped a little. “I got the post back!”

Wyatt whooped and Flynn grabbed her, spinning her around, making her laugh. “ _Čestitamo, draga_ ,” he whispered, kissing her on the cheek.

“We knew you’d do it,” Wyatt told her, kissing her on her other cheek so that she laughed even more. “We gotta go out to eat, we gotta celebrate.”

Lucy’s stomach twisted. All three of them—out to eat? As them?

It elated and terrified her in the same moment. And the fact that Wyatt, of all of them, had suggested it… it made her want to kiss him and never let go. The man who’d once hidden from this, run from it in shame, who’d shied away from it, suggesting they go out in public?

She could’ve cried.

“We haven’t been out of the house enough,” Flynn said. “ _Cher_?”

Lucy looked at their hopeful faces. “Oh, all right, if you really want to make a fuss.”

“I’m driving,” Wyatt said, booking it for the front door.”

“Hell no—” Flynn set Lucy on the ground and tried to intercede.

Lucy calmly got into the front passenger seat and texted the ‘Bunker Group Chat’ while waiting for the boys to work it out (Flynn kissed Wyatt, which was sort of cheating, but got the job done).

_I got the job!!!_

The excited, emoji filled replies made her grin all the harder.

 

* * *

 

Flynn walked a little behind Wyatt and Lucy as they entered the restaurant. It wasn’t super fancy, one of those middle-level dining places where you got to feel like you were dining out without getting too dressed up. Wyatt didn’t feel comfortable in expensive places and personally, Flynn didn’t feel that rolling up to Quince and asking for a romantic table for three would be the smartest idea. It was probably best to ease themselves into this whole, _yes it’s ‘our’ anniversary_ thing.

Lucy approached the hostess. “Table for three, please? Somewhere a little private, if possible?”

“Certainly, right this way.” The hostess didn’t even look twice at them as she grabbed three menus and led them through the restaurant.

Flynn stayed in the rear, watching as Lucy reached back and snagged the tips of Wyatt’s fingers, tangling their hands together briefly before she broke away to slip into the corner booth the hostess had given them.

Wyatt slid in and Flynn, after a moment of hesitation—there were benefits to sitting next to either of his spouses, after all—slid into the booth on Lucy’s other side.

Lucy smiled at him, her hand landing on his knee as the hostess passed them their menus. She was so light today, living up to her name, playful even. Flynn felt like he was taking a mental breath of fresh air after years underground (and thanks to the bunker he knew what that felt like). Their Lucy, the Lucy they knew and loved, was starting to come back.

“Your server will be along in just a moment,” the hostess said, glancing between the three of them as it seemed to occur to her that something not quite ordinary was going on here. But she moved away without saying anything, and more specifically before Wyatt could notice her glance, for which Flynn was grateful.

Once the hostess was gone, Lucy pointedly looked at Flynn’s arm. He gave a put-upon sigh and moved his arm back so that it was draped along the back of the booth, almost but not quite around Lucy’s shoulders.

Lucy tugged on Wyatt’s hand until he moved inward. Flynn smirked, gently stroking the back of Wyatt’s neck with his fingers.

Wyatt glared at him, his cheeks going pink. Wyatt had a thing for being touched on the neck and throat and was wildly sensitive there.

“Look at the menu, boys,” Lucy murmured.

“As if you didn’t set this up,” Flynn replied quietly, grabbing his menu and obligingly flipping through it.

Their server came up and did the usual spiel Hi, I’m Michael, I’ll be your server today, here are the daily specials, are we celebrating anything?

“Yes, actually,” Wyatt said, grinning at Lucy.

“I got the job I’d been hoping for,” Lucy admitted, her voice a little soft like she couldn’t quite believe it herself.

“Congratulations!” Michael’s smile seemed genuine but Flynn was well aware most waitstaff didn’t care all that much. “I’ll have to add a candle to your dessert. And have you all had a chance to look at the menu?”

Flynn tried to hold in his snort. Wyatt kicked him under the table. Flynn got his fingers around the back of Wyatt’s neck and squeezed lightly, making Wyatt’s breath hitch. Lucy grabbed both of their thighs, sinking her nails in, a silent order to _behave_.

Both he and Wyatt straightened up and placed their orders. Michael gave them a look that was definitely a mix of curiosity and suspicion, but he didn’t say anything before moving away.

Flynn just hoped that the other two hadn’t noticed it.

Their food arrived just fine, and dinner was… it was lighthearted in a way that Flynn had been trying to pretend their last few weeks hadn’t been. Lucy had been sunk in herself and Wyatt had been mentally flailing, and Flynn had been at a loss as to what he could do to help. After the wars, after losing people in them… he’d been the one lost and weighted down.

How had Lorena managed it? How had she been strong enough, patient enough, to help him? How had she known what to say and do?

He wished she was here to tell him. Or that he could just… call her, somehow, just the once, to ask. And to add that he did still love her and think about her, her and Iris.

But then, Lorena hadn’t been perfect. She’d had moments where she’d lost patience and snapped at him. They’d had a few bad arguments. One time she’d banished him to the couch.

Yet they’d made it work. He’d find a way to make this work, to support Lucy and Wyatt.

He kept touching Wyatt throughout dinner, as Lucy curled into his side and insisted Wyatt try her pasta, as she had just a little too much wine, as Wyatt nearly choked on his water laughing and Flynn had to thump him on the back, as he kissed the top of Lucy’s hair.

They were all pretty stuffed by the end but Lucy insisted on dessert, ordering tiramisu that Michael did, in fact, put a candle on top of with the word _Congratulations_ written in chocolate sauce on the plate.

Flynn slipped his card over to him before Wyatt could remember and get in on it instead. It literally didn’t matter who paid, except apparently it did, because Wyatt still saw a lot of things as a competition and, well, Flynn liked to poke the bear.

By the time they left, Flynn definitely knew he was the one driving home. Lucy’s kisses tasted of coffee and chocolate and wine, and Wyatt wasn’t tipsy but looked like he was going to fall asleep on the ride home by stretching out in the backseat. “I’ll get the car,” he told them, as Lucy growled jealously over the last of the tiramisu and Wyatt grabbed the jackets that had fallen to the floor under the table.

As he walked out to ask valet to get the car (the charge was worth not having to find a goddamn parking spot in the city), he passed by the server station.

“Ten bucks, _ten bucks_ ,” one of the waitresses was saying, “says you’re wrong, okay?”

“You’re gonna owe me ten bucks,” Michael shot back.

“Do people really do that?” another server, a woman with strawberry blonde hair, asked tentatively. “Isn’t it like? Glorified cheating?”

“I think she’s just fucking them both and they’re putting up with it,” the first waitress said.

“Nah you didn’t see them, they’re fucking each other too, swear it,” Michael said.

Flynn paused, swallowed down the fire that shot up his throat, and turned to smile at them.

“If you’re asking about my relationship with the other two people at my table, then yes, you all owe Michael ten bucks. That’s my wife and husband you’re talking about.” Flynn let just a hint of anger show in the corners of his smile, the barest flash of _I’m not a man you want to cross_. “We’ve been happily married for two years now. It’s so kind of you to ask.”

The first waitress looked absolutely mortified, her face bright red. Michael looked both terrified and vindicated. The blonde waitress looked too busy being shocked to register any embarrassment.

Flynn left them to it. And if he did hustle Lucy and Wyatt out a little faster than necessary, his arm around Lucy’s shoulders so that she was tucked into his side and his free hand at the small of Wyatt’s back so there was no chance for them to hear any of the whispers…

What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.


	4. Chapter 4

Wyatt got the text from Lucy late that morning.

_Want to get lunch on campus?_

He wasn’t going to say no to that. Flynn was busy all day and had said he wouldn’t be home until late and Lucy had an evening seminar thing she was doing so Wyatt had resigned himself to being alone and going to bed before them. Now it looked like he’d get to see at least one spouse today.

_Yeah, love to._

He rolled up to campus and, after getting directions from another staff member, made his way to Lucy’s office. The woman who gave him directions—someone from the natural sciences department—had an odd look on her face as he walked away. Wyatt idly wondered what that was about, then dismissed it as he got to Lucy’s office and knocked on the door.

“It’s open!” Lucy called.

Wyatt opened the door, stepped in—and promptly fell back against it, closing it as Lucy attacked him, her mouth latching onto his.

Wyatt kissed her back automatically, becoming pliant and submissive as Lucy took control of the kiss, his hands wrapping around her hips to hold her steady against him. Lucy slid her tongue into his mouth like she was a monarch looking to conquer, and Wyatt could only hold on for the ride as she ground against him and his brain slowly leaked out his ears.

“Someone’s in a mood,” he murmured as they broke apart briefly for air.

Lucy got her hands in his shirt and tugged him, walking backwards, leading him over to her desk. “You could say that.”

“I thought we were getting lunch.”

“Well if you’re really so desperate to eat…”

Wyatt laughed at the absolutely horrible pun, but worry started to leak into the corner of his mind. Lucy was at work, at her job that she’d only just gotten back. Now she wanted to have sex in her office? That didn’t match the workaholic that he knew and loved and often had to coax away from the history books and into the shower or dining room or bed, depending on what basic aspect of being alive Lucy was forgetting that time.

He went down easily as Lucy sat in her chair, her hand at the back of his head, guiding him between her legs. This probably wasn’t the time to talk about his concern.

Also Lucy was very, very hot like this and he was a weak man who was now trained to respond to even the slightest of Lucy and Flynn’s orders with an enthusiastic _yes right away_.

Wyatt tried to tease, to take his time, to revisit the little places that made Lucy squeak, but Lucy wasn’t having it today. She tugged on his hair and guided him right to where she wanted him, until Wyatt was licking into her roughly, his hands at her knees pinning her down, brutally and efficiently shoving her over the edge.

Lucy shuddered underneath him, beautiful as ever like this, in control and debauched all at once. Wyatt wouldn’t ever get tired of seeing her like this, but…

He stood up on slightly wobbly legs and Lucy cupped him through his pants, clearly planning for more, but Wyatt grabbed her wrist. “I really do want lunch, Luce,” he teased her.

“Wyatt Logan saying no to sex, what is this world coming to?” Lucy replied, but she opened a drawer and got out tissues to clean herself up while Wyatt willed his own, ah, excitement away.

Not that he didn’t want to fuck her. He really, really, _really_ did. But not like this. Not when someone could find out and Lucy would get in trouble, not when it would create a mess that would be a problem to clean up, and definitely not when he suspected Lucy wasn’t in a good mental place for it.

They went to the campus cafeteria for lunch, but Wyatt sent off a text to Flynn as soon as he could.

_I think she’s getting worse._

 

* * *

 

After what felt like far too long to the rest of them but probably felt like an eternity to Rufus and Jiya—Jiya was getting out of the hospital.

Amy did a happy dance when she heard the news from Rufus in the group chat. Dave, who hadn’t seen it yet and was reading a book on the couch, his phone charging across the room, grinned and looked up at her. “What’s got you all joyful?” he teased.

“Jiya’s being released from the hospital,” Amy said, purposefully being as ridiculous as possible as she danced over to him, throwing in some hip swinging and the macarena for good measure.

Dave laughed, and wrapped his arms around her as she plopped into his lap. “About time. How’s she doing?”

“She says she’s doing fine.” They were all aware by now that Jiya tended to say she was fine when she wasn’t. “Rufus says she’s doing fine, too.”

“Good.”

Jiya’s visions, although she could control them, had… taken a toll. Especially once Emma had gotten her hands on Stanley, the other vision-sharing former pilot. Jiya had been getting increasingly unstable, each vision taking its toll on her, but she had refused to stop—she’d wanted to do her part to take down Rittenhouse.

Then the seizures started.

They’d gotten worse and worse, and Jiya had insisted on still using her powers, seeing into various possible futures, other possible timelines, the forbidden colors—until she’d collapsed completely. They’d put her in the hospital, and there’d she’d stayed, catatonic for days.

Now she was doing better, the seizures were gone—she couldn’t use her visions again, was the general consensus. But now that Rittenhouse was defeated, Amy didn’t know why Jiya would.

“When does she get released?” Dave asked, idly trailing his finger up and down Amy’s arm.

“Next week.”

“And you want to do something for her,” Dave teased. He knew Amy was a bit of a party girl and definitely a social butterfly.

“It’s like you know me or something,” Amy replied, kissing him on the cheek.

They planned a small party in celebration of the day. A total surprise, of course.

Amy was a little nervous that they’d overwhelm Jiya, but then, if she was Jiya, she’d want people treating her normally and not walking on eggshells around her.

Dave held the ladder for her as Amy hung up the _Welcome Home_ banner in the apartment that Mason and Rufus had picked out. They’d taken pictures and video chatted with Jiya so that she could see it and give her opinion, but Amy imagined it wasn’t anything like being there in person.

Rufus had been running around wanting to pick out only the best furniture—not the best as in expensive, but the best as in exactly what Jiya would want. They did online shopping together when they could but Amy and the rest of them knew that there had been times when Jiya wasn’t even up to looking at a computer screen.

They’d all worried, internally or at least not to Rufus’s face, that Jiya might not ever leave the hospital.

“All good!” she said.

Dave caught her as she jumped down from the stepladder. Amy grinned up at him, feeling absurdly grateful—it was selfish, she knew, but Dave was healthy and happy. They didn’t have to worry about the kinds of things that Rufus and Jiya did, or the things that her sister and Wyatt and Flynn did.

Lucy had been… distant. She hadn’t meant to be, Amy knew that. Her sister was still making time for her, and still warm and loving to Amy. But she’d been unusually quiet, and didn’t seem to have energy for things the way she’d used to. Flynn had been telling Amy some worrying things about Lucy’s insomnia, and Dave had told her that he’d taken Wyatt out for pool and bowling a few times and had heard that the men were struggling to keep Lucy’s head above water.

“She’s stubborn,” Amy had told Dave, and Flynn. “She’ll keep saying she’s fine even when she’s not.”

Today, though, Lucy seemed her normal self. She was putting flowers in a vase to go on the table, underneath the tablecloth she’d just ironed.

“I think we’re just about finished,” Denise said.

“Rufus texted me that they should be here in about ten minutes,” Mason announced. “Where are the boys?”

Wyatt and Flynn had gone to get the food.

“They’ll be back any second,” Lucy promised. She smiled over at Amy.

Amy realized that she was still standing in Dave’s arms and felt herself blushing. They’d been together for two years now and she still sometimes got that butterfly feeling in her stomach, that fluttery rush where she couldn’t believe the guy who’d been her best friend for so long actually liked her back.

Dave had been there for her through Lucy’s kidnapping—in Amy’s timeline—through her mother’s death, and through Wyatt’s arrival and all the upheaval that had caused. When Lucy had been hurting after Flynn’s death, Dave had been the one keeping Amy from losing her goddamn mind as she’d watched her sister spiral and had felt powerless to save her.

She felt lucky, incredibly lucky, to be this happy. She just hoped that now the other people in her life would get to be happy too.

Wyatt and Flynn arrived with the food, and Amy watched as Lucy interacted with them—the three of them touching each other intimately, casually, a hand on the hip here, fingers intertwining, a brush against the chest there, words whispered into each other’s ears, kisses pressed briefly to cheeks and temples and jaws. Flynn and Wyatt were being a little more careful with their touching Lucy than previously, Amy noted. Like there was just the barest second of extra deliberation before choosing to take her hand or press a kiss to her hair.

Amy sighed inwardly. The three of them were still very much in love. She wasn’t doubting that. But she did worry about Lucy.

“It’ll all be fine,” Dave kept telling her, because Dave wasn’t an idiot and he wasn’t blindly optimistic, but he had faith in the good things winning out over the bad.

Amy wished that she had that kind of faith.

She just wanted her sister to be whole again.

 

* * *

 

Flynn waited with bated breath as Rufus led Jiya into the dark apartment.

“Wha…” Jiya said, right as Rufus flicked on the light.

“Surprise!” Amy crowed at the top of her lungs as Jiya gaped at them.

“Oh my God,” Jiya blurted out. Her eyes were wide as she took in the food, the _Welcome Home_ sign, the streamers, the cake, and the friends. “You guys, you really didn’t…”

“Of course we did,” Mason interjected.

Rufus led Jiya more inside and then it was a pile of hugging and Flynn couldn’t wipe the grin off his face as he watched everyone fawn over Jiya.

“Glad you’re okay,” he told her, when it was his turn and he got to wrap her up in a hug.

Jiya squeezed him tightly. “I missed you guys,” she admitted, her voice muffled.

“And you’re really feeling all right?” he asked, unable to stop himself. He pulled back so he could get a good look at her face. Jiya no longer looked wane, thank God.

Jiya nodded. “Yeah. No more visions, and Mason’s people developed a kind of pill I have to take that’ll help, but y’know. Back to normal. Whatever normal means.”

“Good.” Flynn squeezed her shoulders gently and then released her.

“And how are you three?” Jiya asked. “Rufus has kept me updated and I appreciate you visiting but…”

“We’re managing,” Flynn said honestly. Jiya hated it when people sugarcoated things for her. “Lucy…”

“Has she gotten therapy?”

“We’ve been trying to introduce the idea. She doesn’t want to talk about it at all and I can’t exactly blame her but we can’t let it fester, either. Wyatt told me she’s been co-opting him for sex at work.”

“Lucy, wanting sex? That’s not exactly front page news.”

“Lucy wanting to interrupt her work and risk getting in trouble for having sex during her office hours is new,” Flynn pointed out. Lucy tended to use sex as a distraction from other issues and normally he knew she wouldn’t be so reckless with the job she’d only just gotten back.

Jiya nodded in grim understanding. “It’ll work out, Flynn. You three have managed worse things before.”

“I think it’s the fact that the war is over that’s the struggle,” Flynn admitted. “Now there’s no new crisis…”

“Yeah, I get it.” Jiya sighed. “Rufus and I are still adjusting. What do we do now, where do we go from here, all of that.”

“You can finally have a proper wedding ceremony.”

“God, I know right? About time.” Jiya smiled, looking like she was happy but unsure how to handle the emotion after so long fighting and fearful.

“Jiya. You two are going to be happy.”

She blew out a slow breath. “Thanks. I’m trying to believe that. You’re going to be happy too.”

“I am happy.”

“I know.” Jiya looked over at where Wyatt was sprawled out on the couch, laughing at something Rufus had said, while Lucy was bent over trying not to spew her drink everywhere from giggles. “But I mean… well. You know what I mean. Just because you’re with people you love and you’re happy doesn’t mean that… We’ll get past all this, is what I’m saying.”

Flynn nodded. “So long as you don’t give us all a fright like that again.”

Jiya grinned at him. “Awww, careful, someone might think you care.”

Flynn snorted.

“And, uh, Garcia?”

Jiya rarely called him by his first name. “Yeah?”

“Since Rufus and I are finally having the big day and all, would you mind… my dad’s dead and so I thought… if you wanted… you could give me away?”

Flynn stared at her, his vision a little blurred, something tight and hot unfurling in his chest. “Yes,” he managed, his voice hoarse. “Yes, Jiya, I’d be honored.”

Jiya hugged him again and Flynn wrapped an arm around her in return, overwhelmed, and overjoyed, and just a little sad, and a lot grateful.

 

* * *

 

_The blood’s pooling, spreading over Flynn’s chest, water’s rushing in—three inches, six inches, nine inches—he’s trying, trying to carry him Flynn’s so heavy, so heavy, he’s bleeding out, he’s dead and Wyatt shot him Wyatt killed him he killed him—_

Wyatt jerked awake.

His heart hammered in his chest, pulse pounding in his ears, his breathing choppy.

It took him a moment to orient himself. Mattress, blankets, warmth, bodies, Flynn, Lucy.

He was sleeping with his head on Flynn’s chest, his arm draped over him, Flynn’s arm up over his head, their legs tangled. Lucy was on Flynn’s other side, his arm around her, her fingers tangled in Wyatt’s hair, but her head and other arm flung to the opposite side, like she’d been tossing and turning just moments ago.

Wyatt pressed his ear harder to Flynn’s chest, listened to the steady heartbeat. Felt Flynn’s body rising up and down as he breathed, slow and deep and even.

Jesus, that had been a bad one. He still sometimes got nightmares about his unit but they were rare compared to the ones where something went wrong on a time mission. After Flynn’s… after they’d lost Flynn, the nightmares about that had started, and even though he was back, back for good, even though it had been over a year, that nightmare was still the most prevalent.

Wyatt debated getting up, splashing some water on his face, then decided better of it. He didn’t want to wake Flynn, who was a light sleeper and had trouble dozing off again once he’d been woken up, or Lucy, who didn’t get enough sleep as it was. And there was still that ridiculous but persistent fear that if he left, Flynn wouldn’t be there when he got back.

So he just tucked his face into Flynn’s neck and breathed him in. Flynn shifted, mumbled something in some language or other, and draped his arm over Wyatt’s shoulders.

Wyatt squeezed his eyes shut. God, he loved him so much.

Silence fell, comforting silence, broken only by the gentle breathing of the two people he loved most in the world, and Wyatt felt himself starting to drift back into slumber, thoughts becoming meandering and disjointed…

And then Lucy woke up screaming.

 

* * *

 

“It’s important that you say it out loud,” Dr. Roberts told her.

Dr. Roberts was the therapist that Denise had gotten her after Flynn had died and Lucy had spiraled into depression. After Lucy had woken up from a nightmare, screaming, Flynn had put his foot down.

“I’m fine,” she’d told him. “We all have nightmares.”

“And we all had therapy at one point or another,” Flynn had replied. “You need this, Lucy.”

“I think I’m a better judge of if I need something or not.”

“Lucy…” Flynn had sighed. “You can’t cook dinner because you won’t handle knives. You tore open a package with your hands instead of grabbing the scissors. You go silent for days, you don’t talk, you have insomnia. You have mood swings, you struggle to focus.”

“And?” Lucy had demanded.

“It’s called PTSD.” Flynn had taken her hand, squeezing gently, as Wyatt hovered, unsure what to do or say. “Nobody’s blaming you for what you did to Emma, Lucy, but you’re blaming yourself, whether you want to or not. You need to face this. You deserve to move on.”

So now she was here. Lying on a couch. Again.

“Why?” she asked. “I know what happened. We all know.”

“Emma took a lot from you,” Dr. Roberts commented. She knew about the time travel and all the rest, having been brought to the bunker. “Your mother, your sister at first, your husband—it’s understandable that you would react violently.”

“I’m not like her.”

“I never said that you were,” Dr. Roberts pointed out. “Do you think there might be similarities between yourself and Emma?”

Lucy sat up. “She stabbed Wyatt.”

“Yes.”

“He was bleeding out, he was—what else was I supposed to do? She wouldn’t ever stop, she wouldn’t—”

“I’m not the one you need to convince, Lucy. You’re not here to convince me that you’re right, or wrong. You’re here so that you can forgive yourself.”

Lucy looked down at her hands, her eyes hot and itchy. “But what if I… I’ve done things, or tried to do things, that I never would’ve… I started this whole thing wondering what I was willing to do, what I would do or could do, and now… now I’m just sitting here wondering…” She laughed bitterly. “What have I done?”

Dr. Roberts sighed. “Lucy. What if you were talking to someone else who had done the same thing that you did? Imagine that someone stabbed my wife. She was bleeding out. And I managed to get the weapon from her and stabbed her in return, and it killed her. Wouldn’t you tell me to go easy on myself?”

“I didn’t stab her once,” Lucy hissed. “I stabbed her ten times. Over and over, and over, until she was dead and I didn’t even know it because I just kept—I just kept stabbing—and Garcia had to pull me away—”

“You told me about how you tried to fire the gun on Emma in Chinatown,” Dr. Roberts pointed out.

“The gun was empty.”

“But if it hadn’t been… your husband reports that you tried to fire the gun five or six times. If it had been loaded, Lucy, you would have hit her at least five times. What makes that different from this? Or any of the other things you’ve done or tried to do?”

Lucy shrugged. “This time I succeeded,” she whispered. “And it was… a gun is so impersonal, isn’t it? It doesn’t take balls to fire a gun. It’s why… it’s why people use them for things like—it’s not just that they can take down so many people it’s that there’s distance. But a blade, you have to get right in close, you feel… everything. There’s no detachment.”

“Sometimes, we do things that we think we want. Like go on a rollercoaster. But then once we do them and have the experience, we realize that it wasn’t worth it.”

“This isn’t a rollercoaster. I can’t take back what I did.”

“Do you want to take it back?”

Lucy shook her head, closing her eyes so that she couldn’t see Dr. Roberts’ face. “No.”

“And does that upset you?”

“I don’t want to be someone who’s glad for doing things like that.” Lucy looked out the window. They were up a few floors, and she could see the tops of trees, the sloping hills, the tops of shorter buildings, cars whizzing by. “I want to be who I was.”

“We can’t ever go back to being who we were. We can only find a way to become someone that we enjoy based on who we are now.”

How could anyone possibly enjoy themselves? After she’d worked for Rittenhouse for Amy’s sake, after she’d nearly killed a woman to get revenge for Flynn’s death, after she’d hunted Emma to the ends of the earth, after she’d killed her and had just kept stabbing, and stabbing, and stabbing, tears streaming down her face and a raw vicious scream tearing itself out of her throat…

“How do I even look at myself in the mirror?”

She looked back at Dr. Roberts, who smiled gently. “Just take it one day at a time, Lucy. You’re with two men who have done questionable things. Would you condemn either of them the way you’re condemning yourself?”

No. Never.

“We work so hard to be generous and loving to the people we care about. But we never do the same with ourselves. Your relationship with yourself is just as important as your relationship with your friends and family, Lucy. I would take some time to cultivate that. Journal about your thoughts and feelings as you need to, and talk with me, but I think it’s time that you stopped judging yourself so harshly. Especially for something that was done in a moment of trauma.”

“What I did was wrong.”

“I’m not saying that what you did was right, or that it was wrong. I’m saying that it was done when you were experiencing great fear and grief, and it was instinct to protect someone you loved. Sometimes things are both good and bad, and neither—they simply are. It’s our decision which lens we want to view it through. And whichever lens you do choose, you then have to let it go.”

Lucy gave a bitter smile. “No regrets?”

“Oh, no, very much regret. If we don’t regret then we don’t learn to be better. Regret all that you want, if you decide this is something worth regretting. But you have to learn to leave it in the past where it belongs and forgive yourself just as you would forgive your husbands.”

“I… don’t know how to do that.”

Dr. Roberts nodded. “That’s what I’m here for.”

 

* * *

 

As Lucy started to make strides in the therapy, the subject of getting a few dogs came up.

Well, Wyatt said a few dogs. Lucy threatened to get a cat instead.

He knew what the dogs were really kind of a precursor for. All three of them knew. But it was still a bit too raw, a bit too painful, of a subject to bring up while Lucy was still the way she was, while Flynn still had Iris to think about, while Wyatt still had his dad’s less-than-stellar example to mule over. And he really did want a dog, regardless of the… other question at hand.

“ _One_ dog,” Lucy said. “To start out with.”

Wyatt respected that, and so they went to a shelter and got a black Labrador puppy that they promptly argued about the name of for a couple hours.

They hadn’t had just one specific breed in mind—they’d done research and made a list of suitable breeds, good family dogs that had patience with kids, that kind of thing, and then they went to the shelter and kept those breeds in mind.

Midnight, as they ended up calling her, was from a litter that had been dropped off at the shelter when the owners had learned their lab had gotten pregnant. She had big brown eyes and soft black fur and the moment they’d been put in the room with her and her siblings she’d walked right up to Flynn and put her little paw out as if to have him shake it.

“You’re a polite little thing, aren’t you?” Flynn had cooed, sitting down on the floor.

Midnight had crawled into his lap and wagged her tail and, well, Wyatt had literally seen Flynn’s heart melting.

Lucy fell in love with Midnight right away as well. “Are you the prettiest little girl?” she asked, picking Midnight up and cuddling her. “Yes, yes you are, yes you are!”

They took her home, and spent far too much money on a puppy bed, and puppy toys, and food, and blankets, and stuffed toys and squeaky toys and puppy gates. Midnight had a very sweet temper, happy to run around but also happy to be carried, and seemed to be rather terrified of cars. The poor thing trembled in Flynn’s lap the whole drive home, as he pet her and murmured soothingly in Croatian.

“She’s not allowed to sleep in the bed,” Lucy told them. Wyatt and Flynn agreed. It was best to be stern.

…and then Midnight spent the whole night crying.

“Where are you going?” Flynn murmured as Wyatt slid out of bed.

“I can’t leave her alone,” Wyatt whispered.

He curled up with Midnight in her puppy bed, and woke up in the morning to find Midnight asleep on his chest with Lucy staring down at him in her bathrobe, an adoring smile on her face, as Flynn snapped a picture on his phone.

“I hate you both,” Wyatt mumbled, and then let Midnight lick his face.

A puppy was a hell of a lot of work, which surprised none of them, but knowing something and actually experiencing it were two different things. She had to be puppy trained, which they found Flynn was the best at, patiently teaching her how to roll over and fetch. Lucy was best at getting her to stop doing something she shouldn’t, and Wyatt was a sucker who let her eat table scraps and sleep on him.

It was probably best that they’d only gotten one, he told himself. Next time they’d get an adult dog from the shelter, so they at least didn’t have to go through puppy training again, as much as he appreciated the experience with Midnight.

The best part was how good Midnight was for Lucy. When Lucy got in a bad place Midnight always knew, even before Wyatt or Flynn. She would fetch Lucy a favored book, her prize carried oh so gently in her mouth, and she would wiggle into Lucy’s lap and let Lucy pet her—and when it got really bad, she’d find Flynn or Wyatt wherever they were and tug on them and bark until they followed her to where Lucy was.

Nothing brought a smile to Lucy’s face faster than Midnight and her gifts and her care. She had more energy, taking Midnight out for walks to the park, playing fetch with her. She laughed more, and Wyatt suspected Midnight would do goofy things just for Lucy’s reaction. Sometimes, when she thought the boys weren’t aware, she would wrap her arms around Midnight and bury her face in her fur and cry, while Midnight patiently let her, nuzzling and cuddling.

Wyatt couldn’t wait until Midnight was old enough and well trained enough to go running with him in the evenings. He liked jogging, it helped to clear his mind, focus him. Sometimes Lucy or Flynn joined him, sometimes not. He and Flynn had to find a place to spar now, actually, seeing as they no longer had a bunker to do it in. He missed that, the feeling of being pushed to his limit, the partnership, the way he and Flynn were communicating with one another, almost.

It was about a month after they got Midnight that he went out running and found him.

Wyatt was jogging through the local park, the one that had helped to sell them on this house since they wanted everything ready for kids whenever they eventually got their shit together enough to have them, when he heard something move in the bushes.

He froze.

His first instinct was that it was a squirrel, but then his mind supplied _coyote_ , but then he remembered an article he’d read about a woman’s dog finding a woman with Alzheimer’s who’d wandered out of her house and was freezing on the ground and, well, if it was a coyote then he’d fucking punch it or something.

Wyatt crouched down, trying to get a better look, and the bush moved again. The branches parted, there was a whuffling noise, and…

…a Pitbull emerged.

“Whoa, there, buddy,” Wyatt said. He held out his hand. The dog was fully grown but not old, soft gray in color with a white chest.

The dog shuffled closer, tentative, smelling Wyatt’s hand. “That’s a good dog,” Wyatt said. He tilted his head to check underneath. “You’re a boy, huh? Are you a good boy?”

He idly scratched the dog’s head, behind the ears, looking for a collar. Nothing there. There could be one of those I.D. chips they embedded… he’d have to take the dog to the vet to be sure.

“You want to come home, huh boy? You lost?”

The dog wagged his tail, nuzzling into Wyatt’s hand. Wyatt grinned helplessly.

Okay, then.

“What,” Lucy said when Wyatt arrived home with a fully grown dog in tow.

“He’s lost,” Wyatt explained. “I’ll take him to the vet tomorrow and see if he’s chipped.”

“And if he’s not?” Lucy replied.

Wyatt looked down at the dog. The dog thumped his tail against the hardwood floor. “Shelters don’t always take pits, Luce. People think they’re bad dogs. Violent.”

Lucy looked at the dog. The dog gave her a doggy smile, wagging his tail.

Flynn, who was holding Midnight despite her quickly getting too big to be held (she still insisted on Flynn holding her, apparently forgetting her growing size and also deciding that, like all toddlers, she would never be too big for her parents), chuckled. “Midnight could use a sibling,” he said. “And a Pitbull would deter burglars.”

Lucy crouched down and the dog walked over to her, sniffing her, letting Lucy scratch behind his ears. “You are a friendly boy, aren’t you?” she asked softly. “Look at that face. Who wouldn’t love a face like that?”

“So we can keep Buster?” Wyatt asked.

Lucy’s gaze flew up to his, as did Flynn’s. “You named him?” Flynn asked, clearly biting back laughter.

“…maybe?”

Buster barked happily.

Turned out he wasn’t chipped, and they put up Found Dog signs, but nobody claimed him. They had to get him through a series of checkups, but then Buster Preston-Flynn was officially part of the family.

He latched onto Lucy as his One True Queen immediately, following her around the house, and fiercely protective of her. Wyatt and Flynn would never have said it to her face but they appreciated Buster going running with Lucy when she had insomnia and went for late-night or early-morning runs in the dark. He would nap at her feet while she did grading or watched TV, and was eager to do tricks for her, rolling over, playing dead, barking, and shaking paws on Lucy’s command.

He was a good older brother to Midnight, protecting her from the terrifying vacuum cleaner, the horrors of the basement, and the evil lawn mower. Midnight clearly favored Flynn, while Buster favored Lucy, but they both knew that when they wanted a treat or cuddles, that Wyatt was the pushover to go to. They napped on him constantly and whenever Wyatt so much as set foot in the kitchen they were there immediately with their big, pleading eyes, asking please for just one little bite? Just one teensy little bite?

“Just one dog, huh?” Wyatt asked as they lay sprawled on the couch. Lucy was in the middle, her back to Flynn’s chest, their legs all tangled up together with the popcorn bowl in the middle. Buster had his head in Lucy’s lap and Midnight was on the floor, eating popcorn that Wyatt not-so-sneakily passed down to her.

Lucy booped Buster on the nose. “You got in here through trickery, yes you did, baby boy got in here because his daddy is a pushover, yes he is.”

“Very funny.”

“You are though,” Flynn commented. “ _Du wirst genauso sein als Vater._ ”

Wyatt threw popcorn at him and Flynn laughed. Lucy didn’t speak German but she grinned at the both of them, warm and happy, and Wyatt heard the _my boys_ that went unspoken out loud but was loud and clear in her eyes.

Things were looking up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flynn tells Wyatt in German "you'll be the same way as a parent."


	5. Chapter 5

Lucy got the invitation from Beverly in the middle of September.

Beverly was one of their neighbors, the one who lived down the street in the green craftsman style house. Lucy’d met her, in a manner of speaking, on one of her early morning runs with Buster.

Buster could be a little intimidating.

Lucy had met a few other neighbors—that is she’d waved at them or smiled and said hi—maybe getting a name here and there—but she didn’t really know anyone. Beverly was the only one she’d had any kind of conversation with.

She was just winding down her run, Buster panting at her side and probably hoping Mom would go home soon so he could have breakfast, when Beverly ran out of her house. “Lucy!”

Lucy paused. “Hey!”

Beverly was older, maybe five years older than Carol would’ve been, with tightly curled silver hair. “Lucy, I’m so glad I caught you. I wanted to give you one of these.”

Lucy took the card handed to her, flipping it over. It was an invitation to a Halloween party.

“I know it’s still a month out,” Beverly said, “but we do it every year, everyone comes, and we want to be sure you three get to come too. We go a little… all out on costumes,” she gave a small laugh, “and so we wanted to give you time to prepare.”

“Thanks.” Lucy gave a tentative smile. She was still getting used to—they were all getting used to—being in the world again. Being in public, just by themselves but also as the three of them, together. “I’ll be sure to let the boys know.”

“You all seem nice,” Beverly added. “We’ve been dying to meet you all properly.”

“Ah, yeah, we just—Wyatt was in the special forces and Flynn was in Homeland so we’re all just kind of getting used to civilian life again. Sorry if we’ve been keeping to ourselves.”

“No, no, not at all. And it’s so hard to meet your neighbors nowadays, isn’t it? Not at all like when I was a girl. But bring your men, and get ready to drink some killer cocktails. We give out prizes for best costumes!”

“Thanks,” Lucy repeated, not knowing what else to say, and then Buster started whining to go home and so Beverly waved her off.

“Thanks, boy,” Lucy whispered as they jogged back home.

Flynn and Wyatt were mixed about it. Flynn argued that it was important that they get back into civilian life properly.

“The longer we wait and the more we hesitate, the harder it gets. We have to make friends, we have to find a community. It’ll help us adjust and move on.”

Wyatt was scared about the whole polyamory thing. Flynn seemed more worried about Lucy’s health.

“It’s a month from now,” she told them, even though she herself wasn’t sure how well she’d be doing. “I’ll be fine.” She was better, much better, but meeting all these new people, in a crowded house… it sounded like a recipe for her claustrophobia and her PTSD to rear their ugly heads.

She’d never know until she tried, though.

They wanted to do a group costume, and after much debating settled on _The Man from U.N.C.L.E._

Wyatt and Flynn were Illya and Napoleon, respectively, even though their personalities suggested the opposite. Illya was the blond, and Napoleon was the brunette, and neither man was dying his hair for a damn Halloween party and besides “the last time I died my hair I looked like I was supposed to be on the set of a ‘90s acid trip scifi film,” Flynn said.

Lucy, of course, was Gaby.

She came home about two weeks before the party, noticing Flynn’s car in the driveway. “I’m back!” she announced, taking off her shoes and closing the front door behind her. They all tended to announce their presence as they entered the house—none of them could quite shake the fear that Rittenhouse would send someone, that a seemingly-innocuous entry would turn out to be an agent ready to rip everything from them once again.

“Upstairs!” Flynn called.

Lucy followed the sound of his voice—and stopped dead in the doorway to the bedroom.

Flynn had, apparently, gotten his suit for the party, and was currently wearing it while looking in the mirror and fiddling with the cuff of his sleeve. The soft gray, subtly plaid suit from the party scene went well with Flynn’s hair and brought out the lighter colors in his eyes, and with the vest and tie… hhhnnnggghhh…

He sensed her presence, looking up and turning to face her. “What do you think?” he asked.

Lucy made some kind of choked noise, cleared her throat—then decided words were unnecessary.

So she marched over, grabbed him by the lapels, and kissed him.

Flynn made a startled noise against her mouth, the way he always did when she sprung herself on him, as though even after all this time, he still couldn’t quite believe that he was capable of inciting lust in anyone, least of all her.

Lucy tugged him towards the bed, nearly tripping over her own feet in the process, yanking at his pants trying to get them undone. Flynn came alive at that, hands gripping her waist tightly in that rough way she loved, kissing her back like he’d spend the rest of his life doing nothing but fucking her if he could get away with it.

 _God_ she loved him.

“I take it you—you like the—the suit,” Flynn managed to get out in between Lucy’s frantic kisses.

She finally got his pants undone. “What do you think?” she shot back.

Flynn tried to pull back, his hands going up to his tie, but Lucy slapped his hands away. “Leave it.”

He chuckled, but pulled his hands away and focused on getting her out of her clothes. Lucy had grown to appreciate pants like never before after traveling through so many time periods where she couldn’t wear them, but she’d also come to appreciate skirts and dresses for… various reasons, and one of those reasons was it meant Flynn could just shove her skirts up and her underwear down and oh look at that.

She hooked a leg around his waist and got her hand around his cock, stroking, and she could feel Flynn wanted to pull away and prepare her but fuck she didn’t want to wait she couldn’t wait she needed it, him, _now_.

And, yes, all right, she’d been using sex to cover up her fears and trauma and using it to keep herself from dealing with her emotions. She’d covered all that in therapy, thanks. But she was also deeply attracted to her husband, dammit, and she was allowed to fuck him in his suit if she wanted.

Flynn kept kissing her, laughing a little into her mouth, and it was the first time she could remember in months where they’d had sex and he was laughing, carefree, where they were fumbling like teenagers and kissing frantically and fucking with their clothes on.

She’d missed this.

Flynn tried to be careful about sliding in but Lucy was impatient and clawed at him until he got the picture and started to move hard and fast. She wanted a goddamn tryst in the bathroom of a bar kind of feeling, and fuck he looked so damn good, he was handsome as fuck and hers, all hers, she could fuck him whenever she wanted and he’d give it to her just like this, slick and rough, and she really did love him so very much—

She bit savagely at his mouth, shoving her tongue inside, feeling the rough fabric of his suit against her inner thighs, her stomach, and after all this time Flynn knew _just_ the right angle to get at… Lucy cried out, and kept crying out, because she could be as loud as the fuck she wanted in her own home instead of in a bunker. Flynn seized the opportunity to get his mouth on her breasts through her blouse, being none too gentle—not that she wanted him to be—biting and sucking and generally making a mess and making her cry out even more, _fuck yes_ and _so good_ and _don’t stop_.

It only occurred to her afterwards that they might now need to send the suit in for, ah, dry cleaning, but she really didn’t care. She’d come like a fucking rocket, shuddering and yanking on his hair and repeating his name like it was all she knew.

Flynn grinned breathlessly down at her. She loved how often he smiled now. “You think I should still have this on when Wyatt gets home?”

Oh yes. Yes he definitely should.

 

* * *

 

Flynn wasn’t sure about this party.

None of them were sure about it, of course. But one of them had to be the social one and one of them had to force the other two to take that first step and it was looking like it was going to be him.

So he made them go, and here they were.

It was in full swing by the time they rolled up to the house. Lucy’s hand wormed its way into Flynn’s, squeezing tightly, and he rubbed his thumb soothingly back and forth over her knuckles.

Wyatt hovered behind them. “Do we just…?”

Flynn rang the doorbell. Ghoulish laughter echoed.

Wyatt snorted.

The door opened and Beverly—or so Flynn assumed from Lucy’s description of the woman—greeted them with a big smile and a Morticia Addams costume. “Lucy! Darling! Come in, come in! And you two must be Wyatt and Flynn, we’ve been dying to meet you.”

“I’m Flynn,” he said, holding out his hand and shaking hers, giving as warm a smile as he could muster. When he’d retired the first time, when Lorena was pregnant with Iris, he’d introduced himself as Garcia. He’d been ‘Flynn’ for so long that it had been a relief to be just Garcia, to be normal, to be a person to whom intimacy was allowed and natural.

But now—who he had been, who Garcia had been, was gone. Murdered with his family. And now that man only lived on for very few people. Mainly the two people with him now.

“My my, you are a handsome one. And then you must be Wyatt.” Beverly took his hand in hers. “Lucy has excellent taste.”

“In looks, anyway,” Lucy quipped.

It seemed that Beverly had guessed the three of them were together romantically—the wedding rings probably helped with that—and Flynn felt his haunches lowering a little, his nerves settling. That helped, a little.

“Well come in, make yourselves at home, have fun! There’s activities, and a costume contest, and plenty of food!”

Flynn thanked Beverly, took Wyatt and Lucy’s hands, and led them further into the fray.

Lucy stuck close by him the whole time, pressed into his side, and he could tell that the smile she gave was often forced. But she talked about history with people, and about their dogs, and blushed when people complimented her outfit and asked who she was.

Nobody seemed to care about the three of them—but then, Wyatt evaporated to get some food and Flynn couldn’t find him, so people probably thought they were just a couple and that Wyatt was on his own or something. Flynn tried not to frantically scan the crowd for Wyatt as he met pretty much everyone on the block and made polite small talk and managed to avoid discussing politics.

About halfway through the party, Wyatt slid up to him, drinks in hand. “Luce,” he said, holding a cocktail out to Lucy.

“Oh, thank God,” she said, taking it.

Flynn took his drink from Wyatt, kissing him on the cheek. “You don’t look like you were eaten by wolves.”

“Everyone’s been fine,” Wyatt replied, his voice low. “I mentioned to a few people that I was here with my partners, if anyone’s had a problem with it they’ve done a good job of not saying it to my face.”

Now that Wyatt was back with them, Flynn could see a few people around whispering and nodding significantly in their direction. Probably just interested gossip, he told himself. This was their first time out and about in the neighborhood so people were probably talking about them the way they talked about all new people, and even if people didn’t mind a threesome, this would still be unusual. It would be weirder if nobody gossiped.

“I’m going to find the bathroom,” Lucy said, finishing her drink and handing the glass back to Wyatt. “Be right back.” She brought Flynn’s hand up, kissed his knuckles, and then smoothed over Wyatt’s tie before disappearing into the crowd.

“How’s she holding up?” Wyatt asked.

 

* * *

 

Lucy closed the bathroom door, braced her hands against the sink, and hyperventilated for a moment.

 

* * *

 

“About as well as we expected,” Flynn said.

“Odds of her having a panic attack in the bathroom right now?”

“Pretty high. But I think she just needs a break.”

“When can we leave?”

Flynn glanced at his watch. “Give it another half an hour and I think we’ll have done our duty.”

“I don’t dislike anyone,” Wyatt admitted. “They’re all nice. Not really anyone I want to invite over for dinner yet, but y’know. Could change.”

Flynn nodded. “I get it.”

 

* * *

 

Lucy gripped the edges of the sink and went over the steps in her head: _find five things you can see. Four things you can hear. Three things you can touch. Two things you can smell. One thing you can taste._ She breathed slowly, in and out and in and out. _Breathing in you know you’re breathing in, breathing out you know you’re breathing out._

Her breathing evened out and her heartbeat slowed down.

She looked at herself in the mirror. Nothing to show she’d had a bit of a panic attack. Okay, so an actual panic attack. But it was all fine. She was fine, now.

It wasn’t that anyone was being rude. But they were the new people, so everyone wanted to meet them, everyone was talking about them, and even if nobody was against there being three of them it was still three, not two, and that was a novelty. They were the center of everyone’s attention and thoughts and speculation and she just wanted to be normal, she wanted to be normal again, _please_.

Even if she couldn’t be the woman she’d used to be. She at least wanted to be a woman who could afford to be ordinary.

Lucy made sure she wasn’t sweating through anything, double checked her hair and makeup, and went back out into the party.

 

* * *

 

Flynn saw Lucy and nodded at Wyatt. “Here we are.”

Lucy smiled wanly up at him and took his hand again. “Just needed a moment.”

Wyatt leaned in, kissing her softly on the cheek. “You’re amazing, Luce,” he whispered, pulling back.

Flynn squeezed her hand. “Costume contest’s in a minute, we’ll stay for that and then leave, how’s that sound?”

Lucy nodded, gratitude shining in her eyes.

They didn’t win the contest—which Flynn was glad for. They didn’t need more attention on them. And as good as their costumes were, and for all the compliments they got, they were still just wearing outfits from the 1960s (stylish though they might be) and they were far from the most outlandish costumes here.

They thanked Beverly and her husband Jerry (dressed as Gomez Addams) and made their escape, claiming the dogs would need them.

“Well that… went well,” Flynn said as they walked across the street back towards the house.

“It could’ve gone worse, you mean,” Wyatt replied.

“So people talked about us,” Flynn said, keeping his voice low and even. “That was going to happen no matter what. But we showed up, and we were together and happy and we were friendly. Now it’s over with and we can move on and people will stop talking.”

He took a deep breath. “When I first moved to the U.S. with Lorena, I got a lot of curious people. My accent was even thicker back then, I was self-conscious about my English, I was just out of war—and everyone wanted to know about Lorena’s mysterious European husband who’d worked with a list of military agencies longer than their arms. I was still an NSA asset, I was getting called to D.C. a lot, people speculated. And I found that if I just—put my best foot forward and was charming and made a point to approach them and be friends before they could approach me, it disarmed them. It left them on the wrong foot and I was so polite and there was nothing they could say or do. If I’d hidden away the way that I’d wanted to, then it just would’ve fueled more rumors. At least this way, I had some of the power, and it cut the gossip off at the knees.”

“I still wish we didn’t have to do it,” Wyatt said.

“I know, _Liebling_.” Flynn wrapped an arm around Wyatt’s shoulders and pulled him in, kissing Wyatt’s temple. “I know.”

Lucy unlocked the front door, and the way her face lit up as Midnight and Buster leapt at her, tails wagging furiously—it made Flynn’s heart flip over.

“Aww, did you miss your mama? Huh?” Lucy pet both of them, crouching down and laughing as they licked at her face. “Yes you did, yes you did, my beautiful babies, how are you huh? Did you miss your mama? Yes you did!”

“Besides,” Flynn whispered. “She needed that.”

Wyatt’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah. Yeah, she did.”

It was a good first step, even if they’d been uncomfortable. Was anyone really comfortable at those parties, anyway? When they were first getting to know people? Introducing themselves? It was bigger for them given their pasts, perhaps, but everyone had to get through it.

And they had, without bloodshed. A miracle, truly.

“Want to take the dogs and go out on a hike tomorrow?” Flynn suggested. “Make a day of it?”

Lucy grinned up at him, still petting the dogs. “Ooh, yes.”

Wyatt nodded. “I like it.”

Flynn exhaled for what felt like the first time that day.

 

* * *

 

After the Halloween party, it got easier to interact with people. Neighbors invited them over for occasional small parties or dinners. Sometimes they said yes, sometimes they said no. But at least Wyatt stopped feeling like everyone was gawking at them and then gossiping behind their backs.

There were a few hiccups. Questions that were asked out of curiosity without realizing how rude it was. Things like, “so who’s Lucy’s actual husband,” and “so wait, what’s your sexuality?” and “but how do you not get jealous?”

They were both her actual husbands, their sexuality was none of your damn business, and it was called proper communication, Sharon.

Nobody was outright against them, though, and Wyatt supposed he should be grateful for that. And that it was probably what he, personally, deserved after spending his whole life in the closet and being a jerk to Jess and living the “’Merica fuck yeah” life as a white ‘straight’ soldier with his small town corn fed I-love-my-tractor-and-my-gun roots.

It wasn’t what Lucy and Flynn deserved, after already spending most of their lives under so much scrutiny for different reasons, but it could’ve been worse. They could’ve been run out on a rail. Wyatt could still remember watching _Professor Marston and the Wonder Women_ and getting to the scene where the neighbors find out about them and panicking, unable to breathe, gripping the couch and just thinking _that’ll be us. That’ll be us._

So far, no bricks had been thrown through their house. They were just… a source of entertainment.

Flynn said it would die down in time. That people would get used to them and would stop making a fuss about it, well-intentioned though that fuss might be. Wyatt could only hope so.

At least Lucy and Flynn didn’t have to deal with it all day, thanks to their jobs. Wyatt still didn’t have one. He could join Flynn’s security firm—he knew Flynn would have enjoyed that—but he wasn’t quite sure that was what he wanted.

 _Captain America: The Winter Soldier_ was on television, playing in the background as Wyatt went through the Jobs Wanted section of the paper.

Hmmm. He paused, looked up at the television.

He could volunteer like Sam Wilson. That might be good for him. Give back a little, deal with his shitty war memories and help out others.

That wasn’t quite a job, though. Not yet, anyway, he’d have to go through training and all that and he wanted to contribute around the house. Sure, he cleaned the house and did the groceries and handled the bills and fixed up the—

Wyatt dropped the paper and called himself a dumbass in every language he knew (five, if anyone was wondering).

How many times had Jess yelled at him saying that what she did for him at the house was a job in its own right? How many times had Flynn or Lucy thanked him for cleaning the bunker? How many times had he heard Lucy rant about “the second shift”?

They had money. It wasn’t like they needed Wyatt to bring in a third income. Flynn’s security firm was taking off and Mason had bought the house for them outright so they were fine even if Lucy was back to freaking out about tenure and making up for the time she’d lost at Stanford and what if she was going to be up a creek without a paddle career-wise.

And there were the dogs to worry about. And possibly kids, if they ever got around to that, which Wyatt hoped they would.

So… what was stopping him from just being a stay-at-home husband? Volunteering at the VA, getting his training to be a counselor, spending time with the dogs, taking care of the house…

Yeah. Yeah, he’d do that.

Lucy got home first, groaning with a stack of papers in her arms. She stopped when she saw him. “Somebody looks happy.”

Wyatt tossed the paper aside as she walked over to him, putting her own papers on the coffee table. “Would it be okay if I didn’t get a job and just… stayed home? Maybe did some volunteer work?”

Lucy plopped down onto the couch and put her feet in his lap. “Of course. Whatever makes you happy. If you stayed home because you were miserable that would be different but if it’s what you want…”

“It’s what I want,” Wyatt promised her.

When Flynn got home about an hour later and Wyatt told him he was going to stay home, Flynn snorted. “Yeah, I was wondering when you’d figure that out.” He gave Wyatt a fond smile and a soft kiss, though, so that made up for the snark.

And Wyatt—Wyatt felt like he could finally fit in his skin, for the first time since they’d gotten out of the bunker.


	6. Chapter 6

Lucy stared at the invitation in her hands.

 _You are cordially invited_ had been crossed out so that it now read _you better show up_ and a winking face. The rest was the same, and although Lucy had known about this for some time because hell, she’d been helping to plan the whole thing, having the invitation in her hand made it seem so real in a way that nothing else had.

_You are cordially invited to join Amy Preston and David Baumgardner on July 7 th at the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park._

Mason had pulled some strings for that location.

Lucy sat down heavily on the couch, turning the invitation over, smoothing her fingers across it.

“Hey,” Wyatt said, walking in with the dogs. Midnight and Buster came over, wuffling softly, and Lucy idly pet them and scratched behind their ears. “Is that the invitation?”

Lucy nodded, handing it to Wyatt.

“Damn.” Wyatt read the card. “Makes it feel real, doesn’t it?”

Lucy nodded.

Wyatt frowned, sitting next to her. “Hey, Luce, you okay? You want to talk about it?”

Lucy took a few deep breaths. “Yeah, I’m fine, it’s just… my family has a complicated history with the…” She shrugged. “Jewish side of our heritage.”

Wyatt’s eyes got a bit wide. “Wait what? I thought we were doing the whole Jewish wedding because of Dave’s family.”

“Oh, we are. Amy never cared about religion, Dave’s definitely the one who wanted the rabbi and all and Amy just said okay because she really didn’t care, but…”

“So you’re Jewish?”

“Partly. I don’t know if Rittenhouse was, I don’t know… any of that. I don’t know if we were even raised that way in this timeline. But in the one I grew up with, my dad—Henry—was Jewish, and my maternal grandfather was Jewish, but apparently Mom was Rittenhouse from her mom, who was Keynes’ daughter, so I don’t—know? I don’t know.” Lucy shook her head. “We weren’t exactly the most observant. But it was still… a part of us.”

The front door opened and the dogs rushed to Flynn, barking, showering him with licks and cuddles as he crouched down and affectionately talked to them in Croatian. Then he looked over and saw what was going on in the living room. “Everything okay?”

“We’re, uh…” Wyatt looked at Lucy.

Lucy looked over at Flynn. “We got the wedding invitation and it’s kind of… yeah.”

“Because of the ceremony?” Flynn asked, walking over and stripping off his tie and jacket.

Lucy’s stomach flip-flopped and she gaped at him. “You knew?”

“You told me when we got legally married, in my timeline.”

Oh. She hadn’t ever told Wyatt and Flynn in her timeline. They knew her thoughts on spirituality, knew how she felt there was a higher power, knew she considered herself more someone who studied faith rather than blindly had it. They knew she struggled sometimes. But they’d never gotten… legally anything, and she’d been pushing away her own thoughts on it, and now…

But in Flynn’s timeline, there was no Wyatt, and he and Lucy had gotten legally married. She must have told him then.

Flynn sat down on her other side. “Hey, _cher_ , it’s okay.”

Lucy listed into his side, laying her head on his shoulder. “I don’t understand, I guess. Mom wouldn’t let me get tattoo because she was quoting the Torah at me, but she was a part of this fucking… white supremacist group. How do you reconcile that?”

“How did Emma and your mother reconcile being women in a patriarchal, misogynistic group?” Flynn pointed out. “People make excuses, and they gate keep in different ways. Queer people will try and erase asexuals from the community. I heard once of this… group of girls in a high school who were black, and the popular girls did this thing called the ‘paper bag’ test. If your skin was darker than the brown paper bag, you weren’t allowed into the group.

“People will always find ways to justify making themselves better than others, and it’s messy. I’m… white, ostensibly. My mother was American. But try getting people to care about that when they see my country of birth on my passport or hear my accent.”

Wyatt inched his hand across until he could gingerly take Lucy’s, his thumb swiping back and forth across her knuckles.

“It’s like Lindbergh,” she said at last. “I don’t understand after all I told him how he could go back to being Rittenhouse. I just don’t understand.”

“That’s why…” Wyatt looked like he was finally realizing there was a puzzle sitting in front of him and he had to put the pieces together. “That’s why you were shaking so much. In Germany.”

Lucy nodded.

“We talked about that, in my timeline,” Flynn said dryly. “I felt like shit. It never said anywhere in your journal that you had Jewish heritage.”

“My heritage didn’t matter if we were caught. Not even Wyatt would’ve been safe.”

“True.”

“My dad was all about being Irish and Scottish,” Wyatt said. “I didn’t know I even had Polish and German in me until I was fuckin’ erased from time. Everyone’s got stuff… they pick and choose what they want to celebrate and remember. In your timeline your mom left Rittenhouse. That was probably why she was more into that part of her heritage, from her father and from her husband. But in the next timeline where she stayed Rittenhouse, clearly that didn’t matter to her. We pick and choose what we want to inherit. So now you get to choose if you want to inherit this. Your legacy isn’t all bad, Lucy. Your family… wasn’t all Slytherin.”

Lucy gave him a look out of the corner of her eyes. “When did you become smart?”

“When I had to choose whether to keep following my dad’s example or not.”

Lucy leaned over to kiss him on the cheek, then settled back against Flynn. “Could we order pizza and watch old movies?”

“Like what?”

“… _Casablanca_?”

Flynn and Wyatt looked at each other. “I’ll call the pizza place,” Wyatt said.

And that was all that was said on the matter.

 

* * *

 

Wyatt watched, grinned ruefully, as Dave paced. “You’re gonna wear a hole in the floor, man.”

“Oh, and you never get jittery about Lucy and Flynn.”

“Never,” Wyatt said, just to be an asshole.

Dave adjusted his kippah and glared. “Look, it’s not logical, I know she’s going to walk down the aisle and do the whole thing but try telling that to my stomach.”

Wyatt rolled his eyes. “Look I wasn’t there for the whole bit where you two fell in love because that wasn’t my timeline, but you two were friends for a while first, right? From what I heard you were there for her when Carol kidnapped Lucy and Amy was tearing her hair out with worry. You guys are solid. More solid than Lucy and Flynn and I were, half the time.”

Dave frowned, leaning back against the wall. “You three fought through timelines for each other. Aren’t you three technically all from different timelines now?”

Wyatt nodded.

“And you still ended up together, each time. That’s love, man. Fighting for each other through it all and never giving up.”

Music started up and Dave jumped, startled. Wyatt laughed, standing. “Here, I’ll go first, sound good?”

“You’re supposed to go first, asshole.”

Wyatt walked down through the west gallery, past the New Zealand Tree Fern to the fountain, coming to stand in his place. One of Dave’s cousins walked next, and then Dave.

The music changed, and Jiya and another one of Dave’s cousins walked down, and then…

Their parents gone, Amy had asked her sister and her other brother-in-law to give her away, even as she’d said in the same breath that the idea of ‘giving the woman away’ to her new spouse was antiquated and rooted in treating the woman like property and so on and so forth.

Wyatt smothered his grin—or tried to—as they came down the aisle, Flynn on Amy’s left side, Lucy on Amy’s right. Lucy looked elated and terrified at the same time, her face a bit pale, but God, she still looked fucking gorgeous, wearing pale blue to match the summer atmosphere. Amy was grinning like a maniac and Flynn was staring down at her softly, and Wyatt had the sudden thought, _that’s how he’ll stare at our kids._

His stomach heaved and twisted in anticipation and shock and no small measure of fear at the thought.

They’d been… sort of avoiding the subject of kids.

Flynn wanted them. Or so Wyatt thought. He was pretty sure. Um. Seventy-five percent.

They’d had one singular conversation about it, once, lying in bed together in the bunker, playing their _someday_ game where they whispered the things they wanted to do once Rittenhouse was defeated and they were free to live normal lives.

 _I want two,_ Lucy had whispered, and she hadn’t been talking about pets or cars or houses.

 _Two sounds good,_ Flynn had replied.

They’d gotten out of the bunker. They’d done it. They were free. But then Lucy had stabbed Emma, she’d needed therapy, they’d had to find jobs, get back to… something, to their lives, whatever those were, and it just—

Amy, Lucy, and Flynn got up to the chuppah and Lucy and Flynn stepped away. Lucy was tearing up, beaming at Amy, all traces of trepidation gone, but Flynn caught Wyatt’s gaze and stepped in close.

“ _Geht’s dir nicht gut?_ ”

Wyatt nodded. Flynn’s hand tangled with his for a moment, squeezing gently. Wyatt squeezed back, then tapped his fingers three times against Flynn’s palm. It was their nonverbal signal during sex to pause or stop, and he hoped that in this case Flynn would take it for what it was—a signal to put this conversation on pause and pick it up later.

Flynn squeezed his hand again in acknowledgment, and then let go, focusing back in on Amy and Dave.

Wyatt tried to focus back in, too, especially since he’d never been to a Jewish wedding before and was genuinely curious about how this all went.

Fun fact, they actually did smash a glass. Huh.

Traditionally, Jewish weddings didn’t have vows, but in lieu of some other traditions, Amy and Dave had chosen to write vows for one another.

Dave looked like he was going to throw up before he started his, but in that ‘I’m about to go on a huge drop on a rollercoaster’ fun kind of way, not in an ‘oh God what the fuck am I doing’ kind of way.

“When I volunteered for this assignment,” he said, not having to read from a paper because Dave was OCD and detail-oriented and had practiced his speech on Wyatt, Rufus, Flynn, and anyone else who would sit still long enough, “I had no idea what I was going to get into. Our… assignment and going after a white supremacist elitist cult definitely wasn’t on the list, but neither was meeting you.”

Amy grinned wildly and squeezed his hands.

“I remember when we were all out at the bar, and you called your sister and were having a bad day, and Lucy asked if you could join us. And we said sure, and you walked in, and the whole place lit up.

“I didn’t even think about it in a romantic way. I just remember feeling like fresh air had come in. We’d been stuck in the goddamn French and Indian War for a week—thanks Flynn—”

“You’re welcome,” Flynn said dryly.

“—and I was so fucking tired, and suddenly you were there and making us all laugh and I remember thinking, holy crap, that’s a girl I want to get to know better. You kicked my ass at pool, you made us sandwiches for our ‘work trips’, you were just… the best. And I don’t know when it was, exactly, that I actually fell but I remember when I got shot in Paris, and you found out I was injured and you got this look on your face like you’d flay the guy who did it and I thought—oh shit, I’m in love with her.

“And I was terrified of telling you and ruining our friendship, especially when… when we lost Lucy for a while, and it felt like everything was falling apart, and I didn’t want… I didn’t want to take away a place where you felt safe. I didn’t want to make it weird, if you only needed friendship. But then… hey, thank God, three people couldn’t get their shit together and somehow that led to us.” Dave winked at Wyatt. “Thanks for not existing.”

“You’re welcome,” Wyatt replied, as Dave’s various family members all looked at each other confused, and then seemed to assume it was an inside joke.

“You’re my friend,” Dave said. “First and foremost. And I am so glad for that. You were a rock when the rest of us were strung out and exhausted, and you’re still my rock now. You always make me laugh, and you encourage me to stick up for myself. You don’t take crap from anyone and you don’t let anyone you love take crap either. You haven’t let anything compromise your softness, or your sense of wonder and joy in life, but you don’t let people walk all over you. You’re my hero, and now I get to call you my partner because I’m just that lucky.”

Amy was blushing wildly by the time Dave finished. Then Lucy handed Amy a piece of paper for her speech, because Amy couldn’t memorize anything to save her life.  “From the first moment I met you, you were the guy helping my sister relax, helping her to lighten up, and I felt this huge sense of—relief.”

Wyatt could see Amy’s fingers trembling slightly as she read from the paper, a shaky, ecstatic smile on her face.

“You were always an optimist, even when the rest of us couldn’t be. You found a joy in our work, even when the rest of us were weary. You were patient, and you listened to me as I lost control. I could lose control with you, because you made me feel safe, and you called me out on my bullshit but in the most loving way possible, and you pulled me back when I went too far.

“You’re the kindest person I’ve ever met. You’re friends with everyone and you take things in stride. You’re compassionate and you always insist on finding the silver lining, on finding the good, and on helping people. You’re my best friend, and I can’t wait to have more adventures with you.” She paused. “It helps that you’re really fucking hot, too.”

Everyone chuckled at that.

Wyatt remembered his vows, the vows that Lucy and Flynn had made to him. The ones he’d made to them. How they’d redone those vows over, and over, and over again, and how they were different each time but always meant the same thing.

He almost wished they had done something like this, a ceremony in front of everyone. Flynn had, once, in his timeline when Wyatt didn’t exist and it was just him and Lucy. And Wyatt didn’t begrudge them that, wasn’t envious of it. But it might have been nice…

Mmm, but no. No, they were private people, for all their sex life seemed to be known by everyone since Wyatt couldn’t keep quiet in bed to save his life. He liked that those moments had been for them, and them alone, soft and sweet, whispered, pressed into each other’s mouths, in bed or in history or at the park.

Speaking of such private moments, after Dave and Amy did their vows and sipped the wine and all the rest, they got to retire to the section put aside as the _yichud_ room, and the rest of them could start the reception.

Thank God. Wyatt could use a fucking drink.

It looked like Lucy could use one too. He caught her arm. “Hey, how you doing?”

“I’m okay,” she promised him.

Rome wasn't built in a day, and Lucy wouldn't be able to reconcile everything about herself and her family in a day, either. Or possibly even a week or a month or a year. But she seemed more relaxed, and she had been talking to him, and to Flynn, and to her therapist, and probably to the dogs as well, so.

Wyatt let himself relax, too.

“How much you want to bet they’re having a quickie in there,” Jiya muttered, indicating the space where Dave and Amy were having a few quiet moments.

While the reception was laid back, both of them had insisted on that tradition, and Wyatt couldn’t blame them. When he’d first married Jess he’d been glad that it was just the two of them and her parents so that he didn’t have to wait to have her all to himself, and same with Flynn and Lucy. In those first dizzying moments, knowing the promises you made to each other, who cared about the rest of the world?

“Dave wouldn’t let that happen,” Wyatt said.

Lucy laughed. “Amy might try anyway, though.”

Wyatt watched carefully as Lucy loosened up throughout the reception—the glass of wine she had certainly helped with that, he was sure—until there was no paleness to her face and no stiffness in her jaw.

When the time came for everyone to be allowed out on the dance floor, Wyatt figured he’d just let Flynn and Lucy cut a rug if they wanted and went to find Rufus.

A pair of large hands settled on his hips and he was pulled in flush against Flynn’s broad chest. “C’mere.”

Wyatt turned. “You know I can’t dance.”

“Actually, I know that I taught you how.”

In the other timeline. The one before Wyatt had vanished from existence, the one where Flynn had stayed up all night with him, whispering _one two three one two three_ in his ear, and Wyatt had thought he might die from the warm soft feeling spreading up through his chest.

Wyatt swallowed. “I…”

Flynn wrapped an arm around him, pulling him in closer, his mouth brushing against Wyatt’s temple. “Just one dance.”

Wyatt nodded, and let Flynn move him, let himself be led.

“What was it, earlier?” Flynn asked.

“Ah.” He should’ve known Flynn wouldn’t give that up. “The way you were looking at Amy.”

“Jealous?”

“Ha, ha.” They passed Michelle and Denise, caught up in each other’s gaze, and it was so cute Wyatt hoped that whoever the photographer was had gotten a picture of it. “No, it was—you looked at her like—in this way and I—I couldn’t—I thought, he’ll look at our kids that way.”

Flynn paused, freezing in the dance, then smoothly began to move again as if nothing had happened. “Ah.”

“I know not yet. But I… I still want that. If you all still want it.” _Even though I’m terrified of becoming my father, of fucking up my kid, of hurting my kid, I never want to be that person I never want to hurt them…_

Flynn tightened his hold on him, as if Flynn could hear all the things Wyatt wasn’t saying. “Yes. I… it will… but, yes, _Liebling_ , yes.”

Wyatt nuzzled into the curve of Flynn’s neck, breathing him in, and if their dancing turned more into just holding each other and swaying on the spot, well, nobody called them out on it.

 

* * *

 

Flynn was stretched out on the couch, reading a history book Lucy about the Mongols that had left lying around, when Wyatt walked by and said,

“Oh hey, did you ever contact Gabriel after you got back from saving his life?”

Flynn dropped the book on his own face in shock.

Wyatt stared at him. “I’ll take that as a no.”

“Uh…” Flynn pulled the book from off his face.

“…I’ll just go walk the dogs,” Wyatt said, making a tactful disappearance.

Flynn sat up. Holy _shit_.

When he’d saved Gabriel… he had jumped back to the present with the full understanding that he might not exist. That Rittenhouse might be growing unopposed and unchecked, that everything he had so far done to thwart them would be in vain, that perhaps, even, life would be so much worse for Lucy. But he’d been lost, depressed, and, yes, suicidal. He hadn’t cared if he simply vanished, was unmade. And he didn’t care if he survived but came back to a world where no one knew him.

Nobody had cared anyway. What was the difference, at that point?

Yet, somehow, he had still existed. Maria had still married Asher. And Flynn had wondered—had felt guilt set in—Wyatt had yelled his last name. _Flynn!_

Maria must have met Asher, must have seen her future son’s features in his face, and heard his last name, and thought, _I must marry this man. I must bear his son, so that he can grow up and save Gabriel_.

Because of him—she’d signed herself up to live with that… that…

Of course he’d been curious. He’d wanted to track down Gabriel and demand all the information. Had things been better or worse? Gabriel was fourteen years older than Flynn himself after all. Had Gabriel stood up to Asher? Stood between Asher and Maria in a way that Flynn could not?

Gabriel was safe in Paris, though. Or he had been. Flynn hadn’t fancied endangering his brother by contacting him. Not when he was on terrorist watchlists, and not when Rittenhouse could decide to go after Gabriel.

So Flynn hadn’t contacted him. And then he’d gotten arrested. And then been in the bunker. And then when they’d finally gotten free he’d been a little busy with figuring out his life and helping his wife who had PTSD—hell they all had PTSD—and he’d just… forgotten.

He’d forgotten his own brother.

All right, sure. He could excuse it saying he hadn’t grown up with Gabriel and didn’t know him so why would he think to contact him but—still. He had nearly erased his own existence for the guy. His only living family member. And he couldn’t remember to give him a phone call?

God, Gabriel must hate him.

Wyatt was still out with the dogs when Lucy came back from classes, dumping a bunch of papers on the dining room table. “I hate freshman,” she announced, then walked over to him. “They—” She paused.

“I look that bad, huh?” Flynn asked.

Lucy took the book he was still, somehow, holding out of his hands and set it on the coffee table, replacing it with herself as she wriggled into his side, her head on his shoulder, one arm flung across his chest. “What is it, handsome?”

“I sort of forgot I have a brother now.”

Lucy looked up at him. “You… oh. _Oh_.”

It was oddly comforting that Lucy had also forgotten. Flynn chuckled, bringing a hand up to run through her hair. “It was… something I couldn’t do anything about right away, and then with everything else…”

“I’m sorry,” Lucy whispered. “I took up so much of your time, with—with the therapy and the nightmares and Emma and then Amy’s wedding and all of that and just—”

“No, no, _cher, moja draga,_ hey.” Flynn rotated carefully so that he was on his side and could scoop her up into his arms, pressing their foreheads together. “You have nothing to apologize for. You are not a burden or an inconvenience in any way. You have a lot of healing to do and that takes time. We all do.”

Lucy breathed deeply, carefully, nodding. “Okay.” The word was barely audible.

“I need to call him, don’t I?” Flynn asked.

Lucy nodded. “I think so.”

“How do I even explain…”

“Be honest with him,” Lucy said. “Just like you were honest with me, from the start. I know I—I didn’t appreciate it at first. But looking back—you never once lied to me. And I appreciated that, so much, you have no idea. It was why I knew I could trust you, trust your word. You had always been honest with me.”

Flynn nodded. Be honest.

Okay.

 

* * *

 

Lucy was staring into space, thinking about Flynn. He was calling Gabriel up today. Possibly right now. Was he okay? He said he’d do it at work, because of the time differences and wanting to call while Gabriel was off work, but should he have done it at home with Wyatt there? Should she be there? Should—

“Lucy!”

She jerked, and realized she’d nearly overflowed her coffee mug. “Oh shit!”

“Something on your mind?” Diana asked. Diana was an Antiquities professor.

Lucy put the coffee pot back and added two sugars to her mug, stirring carefully so she didn’t spill any. “Ah, just my husband. Family shit he’s dealing with.”

“That can be hard. Parents?”

“Siblings.” Lucy took a sip of the coffee, then winced at the heat. “He hasn’t talked to his brother in years and so it’s going to be a rocky start.”

“I thought Wyatt was an only child?”

…oh fuck.

Lucy hadn’t exactly… come out, so to speak, to many people. She turned to face Diana. “Sorry, I’m actually talking about Flynn.” She made her voice take on that nonthreatening, reasonable tone she’d used hundreds of times with historical figures. “I have two husbands. Wyatt and Flynn. Wyatt’s the blond one you’ve met, he picks me up sometimes, he stays home and takes care of the dogs. Flynn owns and runs a security firm.”

“Oh.” Diana looked unsure of what to say. “So they—share? You?”

Lucy felt as though her lungs were too thin, too wet, paper bags about to shred. “It’s all three of us. They’re married to each other as well as to me.”

“Is that even… legal?”

“No. Only Flynn and I are legally married.” Lucy forced a smile onto her face. Just like with all those men throughout history, she told herself. “But we had a private little ceremony and we’ve worked hard to make it as permanent as possible.”

“…I see.” Diana cocked her head, and Lucy felt like a particularly interesting museum exhibit. “Don’t you ever get jealous? Or don’t they ever get jealous. You know how men are.”

“We don’t really… subscribe to that whole notion. The idea that people need to be possessive. We communicate a lot, open and honest, and we’ve worked hard to establish a lot of trust. We love each other, and we work to show that. Some humans are only comfortable with one partner, some are good with just one or with more if they meet the right person, some need more than one. But I think that… the possessive, jealous kind of love that society teaches us is… unhealthy. And we don’t subscribe to that. It hasn’t always been easy, but we’ve reached a point where we’re happy with each other.”

Diane raised an eyebrow. “Well… I still don’t get it. But you do you, if it makes you happy.”

Lucy kept her smile on her face, nodded, and retreated back into her office.

She sat down and just barely managed to resist the urge to throw her mug against the wall until it shattered.

It wasn’t pity or judgment or outright anger. She knew it could be so much worse. But she also didn’t know what was so difficult to understand.

 _It could be worse,_ she told herself.

 _Yeah,_ that other voice replied, the one that had gone silent after her car accident and had only started back up again when she’d begun to time travel, _but it could be a whole lot better, too._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I have at all been offensive in discussing the Jewish part of Lucy’s heritage, please let me know and I will make any needed changes. My first and biggest desire is to be respectful.
> 
> The 'paper bag' test is an actual thing that Rosalind Wiseman, author of Queen Bees and Wannabees (the book that inspired the film Mean Girls), ran into at one of the schools she visited (I have come to have issues with that book, but when I read it as a teenager, boy did it stick with me).
> 
> I also highly recommend actually visiting the Conservatory of Flowers if you can. It’s gorgeous.


	7. Chapter 7

Flynn phrased and re-phrased the email, and then at last sent it off before he talked himself into not sending it at all.

 

_Gabriel,_

_Hey, it’s me. Garcia. I know that we haven’t talked in… a while, and that you probably have a lot of questions and concerns. I don’t know how much you were following the news or what you know or heard, but I want to talk. I hope you’re doing well._

He tried about ten variations of a sign-off, going from ‘love’ to ‘sincerely’, and finally just left it blank.

The response came a few hours later.

 

_Garcia,_

_I heard a lot of things. I’m free tomorrow at ten your time._

_~ Gabriel_

Well. It wasn’t a warm and fuzzy greeting, but then, Flynn hadn’t exactly expected one.

He did the call while Lucy was at the university and Wyatt made himself scarce. Flynn didn’t want anyone to be around for this, even two people that he loved more than anything.

His heart pounded in his chest in a way that it hadn’t in months, not since their final Rittenhouse mission, not since he’d heard Lucy screaming and he’d thought she was dying, only to come around the corner and find that it was Emma who was dead and Lucy was shaking, covered in blood, staring like Lady Macbeth at hands she didn’t recognize.

It was just a call to his brother, for Christ’s sake. It wasn’t life or death.

But it sure did feel like it.

They Skyped, so that they could see each other’s faces. Flynn had only ever seen Gabriel’s face in a few photographs when he’d gotten back from the mission with Maria, making sure Gabriel was alive.

Now Gabriel’s face popped up, in full color, living, breathing, and God, he looked so much like Maria, Flynn oddly found himself wanting to cry.

“Garcia.” After growing up in the United States, then moving to Croatia, then getting his education at Oxford and living in France for the past two decades, Gabriel’s accent was a hodgepodge. “I’m… surprised you called.”

“I’m surprised you picked up.” Flynn winced. That was a bit too cantankerous. “I meant… after I didn’t contact you for so long. I’m not sure I would’ve picked up, if it were me.”

“You were always stubborn.” Gabriel paused. “What exactly happened?”

Flynn wasn’t exactly about to tell him that time travel was a thing. But what excuse could he possibly give?

“I took on an assignment for a friend, and ended up inadvertently angering some… powerful people. They went after me, and got Lorena and Iris instead, and framed me for it.”

“Yes. I…” Gabriel cleared his throat. “I paid for the funeral. Her brother was asking me—I had no answers for him.”

“I had to go underground. I was working with Homeland, eventually, and we were finally able to clear my name about six months ago. So now I’m—trying to rebuild my life.”

“You’re on the west coast.”

“In California. I met… I met two people. I’m—I’m married.”

Gabriel blinked. “I’m sorry, did the boy who spent three months dating Lorena before he realized that’s what he was doing just tell me he married two people?”

“You seem a little nonchalant about my going onto a terrorist watch list and disappearing for about five years.”

Gabriel looked off into the distance, his gaze heavy, and then looked back at Flynn. He had Maria’s dark eyes, and her mouth, and the expression on Gabriel’s face somehow reminded Flynn of when he was little and would do something and expect his mother to yell at him only for her to hug him instead, like when he climbed too high up a tree and fell, knocking the wind out of him.

“When I was a kid,” Gabriel said carefully, “I was stung by a bee.”

Flynn felt like he couldn’t breathe—not that his lungs stopped working, but that time itself stopped, freezing him.

“There was a man there, and he’d been very kind to me. Bought me ice cream, and spent the day with my mother. My father… wasn’t really in the picture. You know how Mama was, always so driven, and she was going to raise me herself come hell or high water and she was going to make a career for herself while she was at it.”

Flynn chuckled. That was his mother, through and through.

“But I knew she was lonely, I know she… she refused to lie and say she was a widow, and so a lot of people looked down their noses at her. It was good for her to spend a day with this person. And then the man just—somehow knew that I was in trouble. Gave me an injection, saved my life. And then he told my mother…”

Flynn had to look away, his eyes stinging. Getting to see Maria again, seeing her young and beautiful and happy… he’d wanted to cling to her knees, like when he was small, when just a hug from her could make all the pain go away.

Gabriel’s voice was getting a little thick, too. “…he told her that every memory he had of her, she was always sad. And I didn’t understand at first, but Mama explained later, that I was going to have a little brother someday, and to always look after him because he came through time to save me. As a child I accepted that, of course I did. And as an adult… it was harder to accept. But then you married Lorena, and you had Iris, and I remembered you talking about losing your family while I played in the sand, and then you disappeared and I thought—this is it. Somewhere he’s jumping through time.

“So I’m not nonchalant about it. I wish you had reached out to me, at some point. But I was always sort of waiting for this day. You’re my little brother. I don’t know what you remember. But I remember… you just always being my little brother, and always trying to look out for you. You were so fucking stubborn, and had a martyr complex, I swear, and you couldn’t help loving so fiercely…” Gabriel shook his head.

“I guess I never—I hadn’t thought—I figured you were a kid. That you wouldn’t remember.”

“Mama made sure that I did.” Gabriel gave him a wry smile, achingly similar to the one Flynn saw every day in the mirror. “She was a genius, she figured out what had happened, figured out theoretically that time travel was possible. She didn’t want to—she wanted to preserve our relationship. I was never to tell you, just to know that if you had to go away, vanish, that I had to understand. So I’ve tried to.”

“I don’t know you,” Flynn confessed. “I lived in a time where you died. And when I came back and you were alive—it wasn’t like I suddenly had all these memories that were added. But I—if you could fill me in—”

“How about you come to France?” Gabriel suggested. “Bring your spouses.”

Well. They’d have to wait until the end of the quarter, when Lucy finished up work, but Mason had been hinting that he’d pay for them to go on a proper honeymoon, and he wanted to take Wyatt and Lucy to Croatia, and she especially wanted to go to France and Italy, and Wyatt didn’t care where they went so long as it was warm…

“I’ll do that,” Flynn said. Something inside of him finally unwound and relaxed. “They’d love that—Lucy and Wyatt.”

“I’ve got time. If you’d like to tell me about them.”

Oh, Lord. “All right but the thing you have to understand is that timelines change…”

 

* * *

 

Lucy had never been outside of the United States except for time travel, save for a single trip to France as a teenager with her mother.

Now, she was spending the summer going everywhere in Europe.

Well, first she’d had a minor (she called it minor, Flynn called it epic, Wyatt called it terrifying) breakdown about how she wasn’t going to be rehired for the fall and she’d spend the rest of her days useless and eventually living under a bridge—to which Wyatt’s kindly meant comment that Flynn’s security firm was doing fine and none of them were living under a bridge only sparked more outrage and tears—but then she’d gotten confirmation from Stanford that yes, they wanted her on for the winter quarter, with some hints about perhaps trying again for tenure.

They better give it to her this time, those bastards.

Then she planned the itinerary because if Mason was serious about it then she was going to literally take him for all he was worth and see every single corner of Europe or drop dead trying.

Flynn got that worried look on his face that meant she was possibly biting off more than she could chew but she was finally getting to travel, in the 21st century, for _fun_. Nothing was stopping her.

They started late, because Stanford was still on the quarter system and she wasn’t finished until the second week of June, but they had until January to get back, so it all evened out. Six months of nothing but travel.

Her therapist especially thought that it would be good for her. “You’ve settled into a strong routine and you’ve made good progress with our work. Now it’s good to take a break, to step out of the pattern, shake things up and really relax. You haven’t done that since you got out of your Homeland assignment.”

And she was right. Stepping off the plane into Heathrow, their first stop, was like taking a breath of fresh air after being in a dungeon and forgetting what stale air tasted like. It was like emerging from the bunker all over again.

They hit up the United Kingdom and Ireland first, then went up to Iceland, then Scandinavia, making their way east and down through Russia, Poland, and the rest of Eastern Europe before ending up in Croatia.

Lucy nearly cried when Flynn took them to his hometown and she saw the smile on his face. They did so much swimming that Flynn permanently smelled of the ocean and Wyatt’s freckles stood out, and her hair got a lighter shade of brown from all the sun exposure. They took pictures—artistic ones that Flynn took of her against natural wonders and the sunset backdrop, goofy selfies that they sent immediately to the group chat, sly ones that Wyatt took of Flynn when he was looking particularly handsome. Lucy took a lot of pictures of food, posting them all on social media, and felt no shame.

They made their way back up slowly, hitting up Germany and the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, Switzerland, until they got to Italy and Lucy had to practically be dragged out of the country. Monaco was next, and then finally: France.

When they got to Paris, Lucy, as Wyatt phrased it, “promptly lost her mind.”

Gabriel met them at Charles de Gaulle, and was very gracious about speaking to Lucy in French, helping her to practice.

Lucy honestly worried about Flynn. The closer they got to Paris the more tense he had gotten. He had told them what Gabriel had said, and she knew that he was trying not to worry, but he was scared that the person he was, wasn’t going to measure up to the person Gabriel remembered.

But Gabriel pulled Flynn right into a hug—he was two inches shorter than Flynn was, Lucy noted—and Flynn buried his face in his brother’s shoulder and Lucy could see everything crumple.

“Come on an adventure with me,” she told Wyatt, and she led him through the streets of Paris, to the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower and the Musee d’Orsay, while Flynn got time with his brother.

When they finally got back, exhausted and full from eating too many crepes, with the city of stars shining around them, Flynn looked tired, and red-eyed. But he was smiling.

 

* * *

 

“Any particular plans while in Paris?” Gabriel asked, taking Flynn to his favorite local café for espresso and some pastries.

“Lucy and I want to see the catacombs. Wyatt wants to see the _Mona Lisa_ just so he can tell our friend that he did. And I think a photo on the Eiffel Tower is something you have to do or you’re arrested, so.”

Gabriel chuckled, finding them a table. “Lucy is magnificent. She said she wants to see everything.”

“She means it. Our next stop is Spain and Portugal and she’s already got the itineraries planned. It’s getting her to stop and breathe that’s the struggle.”

“I appreciate all the pictures you’ve been sending. You’re making me envious.”

Flynn paused as the server came up and they put in their order, and then cleared his throat. He’d been nervous about this, and trying to hide it, but there was no getting around it. He had to know. “What was—what was our life, like? What was I like?”

Gabriel started to speak but Flynn kept talking, the words sliding out of him, unstoppable now that he’d begun, his stomach tight and his hands tightening around the arms of his chair. “Because I—the person who I grew up—I grew up with a father who was—well, kind of shit, and I grew up with a mother who never got over the loss of her first son, and I grew up wishing for a brother, and I grew up hotheaded and stubborn and I ran away to join the army too soon, and I was just a kid and I saw—a lot, and I threw myself into war for far too long, and then… I moved to America, of all places, and I met my wife.

“And I’m not exactly the best person. I’ve done… things that I regret, things that I don’t know—I don’t understand how Lucy and Wyatt can forgive me for them, or continue to love me in spite of them. And I just don’t know how I can be the brother that you remember, or the brother that you want, when my life is so very different from what you know.”

Gabriel looked at him for a long moment, long enough for the server to return with their order, and he took his time sipping his espresso before answering.

At last, he said, “Do you still bake when you’re stressed?”

Flynn started a little, caught off guard by the question. “Yes?”

“Were you still a King Arthur nerd as a child?”

“…yes.”

“Did you run away to join the war three years too young despite all that Mama tried to do to keep you out of it?”

“Yes.”

Gabriel gave him a slow, close-lipped smile. “Then you’re still the same person. Some differences, sure. But you’re still my brother. And I choose to enjoy learning the differences instead of being saddened by them. Light a candle instead of cursing the dark. And, well. If you always wanted a brother—I’m only sad that it took you this long to get one.”

“You remind me so much of her,” Flynn blurted out. “Of Mama.”

Other children, as they got older, started calling their mother ‘Mom’ or something more ‘adult’. Not Flynn, and apparently not Gabriel.

“Do I?” Gabriel grinned, sounding delighted. “It was just the two of us, until I was thirteen and she met Asher. And then you were born—and then after I got rid of Asher, it was—I wasn’t your parent, but I wasn’t just a brother, either. I was something in between. And she leaned on me a lot, for help. I suppose it’s natural I picked up a lot of her traits.”

“I’m glad—that she lives on, in you.”

Gabriel’s grin didn’t waver, but it softened. “She lives on in you, too, Garcia.”

 

* * *

 

Wyatt wasn’t going to object when he woke up to the feeling of Lucy slowly kissing up his neck, her hand sliding over his chest. Distant sounds of running water told him that Flynn was in the shower.

“What time izzit?” he murmured.

“The perfect time,” Lucy purred. Wyatt smelled coffee and glanced over to see that either Lucy or Flynn had gotten coffee sent up. He couldn’t see the clock, but the bright sunlight beaming in through the curtains told him it was at least late morning, possibly creeping on noon.

God bless the Spanish timetable. Bars stayed open until four in the morning, it was fantastic. The whole ‘shops close for siesta’ thing took a little getting used to, though.

Lucy scraped her teeth along his jaw, her hand dipping lower, between his legs. She dragged her fingernails through the thatch of hair just above his cock, teasing him. “Mmm, c’mon, sleepyhead…”

Wyatt noted the rumpled state of the sheets. “You fucked Flynn already didn’t you.”

“Maaaaaybe.” Lucy pulled the covers back and slid her leg over him, half-straddling him. Wyatt was definitely hard now, rubbing up against her, and he could feel how slick she still was.

He reached up to touch her, but Lucy slammed his hands down on either side of his head. “Tisk tisk, Mr. Logan, I didn’t say you could touch.”

“Aw, Luce, c’mon—”

“Nope.” She rolled her hips, dragging herself against his cock but not taking him inside. Wyatt growled, bucking up, but Lucy just laughed.

“Ask nicely.”

“Please?” Wyatt squirmed as Lucy took biting kisses down his chest.

“That’s better. Let’s hear a few more.”

Lucy took her time with her hands and her mouth, exploring what felt like every inch of his skin as Wyatt begged, over and over, until at last she took pity and sank onto him.

It felt like she was riding him clear through the mattress, ruthless and fast, scratching up his shoulders and chest with her nails as Wyatt twisted his hands in the sheets, waiting to touch until she said so.

He didn’t think about the fact that they weren’t using a condom—they hadn’t used those in forever. He certainly wasn’t thinking about how Lucy had gotten lazy while traveling and hadn’t upped her shot. Not when he was lost in the haze as he came inside her, or as Lucy bit her lip and whined, clenching around him, and not when she collapsed against him afterwards, the both of them panting.

Wyatt didn’t think anything about the date, either. He noted that it was November, because they were leaving Spain tomorrow and headed for Portugal, their final stop before they went home for the holidays, but not for any other particular reason.

He and Lucy joined Flynn in the shower, and they promptly forgot about what had just happened in favor of what was happening now, between the three of them, Flynn laughing into Wyatt’s mouth as he kissed him, and none of them thought any more about it until two months later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shh just pretend we live in a perfect world where professors can take an academic quarter off work so they can galavant about Europe with their husbands.


	8. Chapter 8

Wyatt loved sparring with Flynn. He hated just lifting weights or running on a treadmill. He needed to feel like he was doing something, he needed to feel active, accomplished. His mind just… checked out when he did normal gym workouts. Drove him nuts. It was why he loved running with the dogs, actually going somewhere, and with companions.

And it was why he loved sparring. Flynn was a fucking tank, but also flexible and agile. Most people were one or the other, and it was fucking annoying if you were up against him to have to content with both. No wonder he’d been kicking Wyatt’s ass to kingdom come when they’d been chasing him through time.

Now, though, it was good—because it kept Wyatt thinking, kept him on his toes, didn’t just become mind-numbing. It was one of the biggest ways that he and Flynn spent time together, playfully sending each other to the floor, grappling, like young wolves.

Back in the bunker, they’d had their own area for sparring, but now they went to the local boxing gym and just had it out, then came home.

They burst into the door still tussling a little. Lucy’s purse and things were scattered around the house, but Wyatt didn’t see the woman herself. “Luce?”

“Bathroom!” was the response, coming from the downstairs restroom.

“We’re going to take a shower, _cher_ ,” Flynn said, grabbing Wyatt’s wrist and leading him up the stairs.

“Oh, we are?”

“Get your ass in there, Logan.”

“Aww, you mad I got the drop on you at the end, there?”

Flynn growled and shoved him into the bathroom. Wyatt just grinned, stripping off his shirt and dancing back just out of Flynn’s reach. “C’mon, it’s no shame to admit you slipped up.”

“Says the man I pinned three times today.” Flynn turned on the water and started taking his sweat-soaked clothes off. “You’re acting awfully cocky for someone who was up against the ropes the whole time, are you sure this is the attitude you want to be taking?”

“Why.” Wyatt got his pants off and then stepped into the shower, pushing his hair back out of his face. “You gonna do something about it?”

Flynn gave him a wry look that said _I know exactly what you’re doing_ right before he stepped into the shower and pinned Wyatt against the wall. Wyatt half-heartedly fought back but was really just letting Flynn manhandle him until Flynn could get Wyatt completely against the tiled wall, Wyatt’s hands pinned up over his head, Flynn mouth fixed around his neck. Wyatt shamelessly pushed up into it, sliding their bodies together, grinning breathlessly. He loved pushing Flynn until Flynn just went for it, fucking him roughly, and after two hours of sparring, they were both pent up.

“C’mon,” Wyatt panted. “C’mon, give it to me, think I can’t take it?”

“Oh, I know you can take it,” Flynn replied, kissing him deeply. He shoved his hips up against Wyatt’s, rutting, the friction enough to have Wyatt moaning and straining against the hold Flynn had on his wrists. “Yeah, that’s it. I could feel you, getting hard every time I pinned you.”

“Yeah and you were an asshole about it, you didn’t have to buck your hips like that every time.” Wyatt tried to get his leg hooked around so that he could get better leverage and, y’know, actually orgasm, but Flynn saw it coming and moved to counter, spinning Wyatt around and pinning him so that his face was now pressed into the tile, one arm was behind his back, and Flynn could grind up against his ass.

“Do I have to teach you how to behave?” Flynn asked. “I could’ve sworn we already went through all of that.”

“Make me,” Wyatt shot back, because he was feeling ornery.

Flynn wrapped his hand around Wyatt’s dick and squeezed. Wyatt shoved his hips back automatically, and he could feel Flynn grinding against him, hard and thick and _Jeeeeeesus_ …

“I know what you want me to do,” Flynn whispered in Wyatt’s ear. “You want me to fuck you. Fill you up and fuck you until you’re a mess and can’t even move. But you’re being a brat so you don’t get that today.”

Wyatt whined. His, ah, behavior had backfired on him.

“You’re going to stay nice and still while use your ass. If you do as you’re told I’ll get you off with my hand. And then we’re going to go have some tea with Lucy, and if you are good, I’ll fuck you properly tonight, and Lucy will too.” Flynn rolled his hips again and Wyatt whined once more, shoving back, knowing begging would be useless.

“Nuh uh.” Flynn started stroking him. “Stay perfectly still.”

Wyatt bit his lip, staying still as Flynn ground up against him, Flynn’s teeth sinking into his shoulder, as he chased his orgasm, used Wyatt to get himself off and Wyatt just stayed there, pinned, and took it.

It made him so turned on he could barely even think, just pant with his forehead against the tile as the water sloshed over them both and Flynn took what he wanted, staining Wyatt’s lower back with a grunt.

Flynn kissed just behind his ear and Wyatt squirmed. “Somebody’s desperate.”

“Somebody just got cock teased and would like to orgasm sometime today, asshole.”

Flynn growled and twisted his wrist and Wyatt just about saw stars. Fucking hell—

His hair was yanked, and next thing he knew Flynn was kissing him properly again, snarling into his mouth, and Wyatt was being ruthlessly stroked and shoved over the edge.

“That better?” Flynn asked nonchalantly.

Wyatt elbowed him—or tried to. Flynn neatly caught his elbow and twisted him so that they were facing one another again. “Ah—you have to be good.”

Wyatt grumbled but relaxed. Flynn chuckled, grabbing the shampoo. “C’mere, _Schneck_.”

 

* * *

 

When they got out of the shower, Flynn could hear Lucy puttering around downstairs. There was a bit more… clanking going on than usual.

He went downstairs, Wyatt trailing behind him. “Lucy?”

“In here.”

The moment he entered the kitchen he realized that something was wrong.

Lucy’s cheeks were unusually pink, and she wasn’t quite looking either of them in the eye.

Flynn went to her at once. “ _Cher_. Hey. What’s wrong?”

Lucy stared at him. “How did you—doesn’t matter.” She shook her head. “I—I’m—” She took a deep breath, then pushed something across the kitchen island towards them.

Flynn knew what it was the second his eyes landed on it, but it took Wyatt a moment of walking up closer.

“Hooookay,” Wyatt said quietly, the air whooshing out of him. “Okay. That means—”

“It means I’m pregnant,” Lucy whispered.

Flynn felt his stomach swooping.

He knew—not everyone was meant to be a parent. Not everyone wanted to be a parent. There was a lot of pressure from people, to have kids, to fulfill that dream. But Flynn had. He’d always wanted a child, two, maybe three at most. The day Iris had been born had been the best day of his life.

But—could he do that again? Feel that love and also that fear that this precious being would be taken away from him?

Wyatt was just standing there, staring at the stick, looking floored.

Flynn realized his wife was waiting on his reply. And he did—he did want—he _wanted_.

He crossed to her, wrapping her in his arms. “Lucy. _Lucy_. You’re sure?”

She nodded into his chest. “Eight weeks along.”

Flynn sank to his knees, not even realizing at first that was what he was doing. He knew that it was far too early to feel a kick or anything of the sort but he pressed his face into her stomach, kissing softly. Lucy’s hand slid into his hair, stroking, petting.

“Barcelona,” Wyatt said.

“What?” Lucy replied.

“That was—eight weeks ago. We didn’t—because we were so tired the next week we didn’t have sex, I mean, neither of us fucked you, with our dicks, I mean, we didn’t—and before that we used condoms because we didn’t want to get the bed dirty before we slept on it—”

Barcelona, without a condom, that would be Wyatt and Lucy while he had been in the shower. So the baby was theirs, biologically.

That didn’t matter to Flynn. The baby was all of theirs, and he loved the child already, loved them so much he wanted the nine months to be up so that he could hold them.

The fear was still there, but he wasn’t… he wasn’t going to bring that up. Not right now. Right now was about celebrating.

“I tell you I’m pregnant and your first thought is when it happened?” Lucy asked, sounding terse.

“Sorry, I’m sorry, I just—I—holy shit, Luce, you’re pregnant.” Wyatt sounded like he might pass out.

Flynn pulled back from Lucy with a final kiss to her stomach, then stood up, turning and beckoning to Wyatt.

Wyatt stumbled over, grabbing onto Flynn’s hand and then wrapping his other arm around Lucy’s shoulders, staring at Lucy like she was something ethereal.

Then gently, shaking, he drew her in, burying his face in her shoulder, her hair.

Lucy shushed him, calling him sweetheart, holding him tightly. Flynn’s heart got tight and he wrapped his arms around them both as they swayed on the spot.

Jesus. A baby. They were going to have a baby.

 

* * *

 

Lucy told Amy first.

She took her out to lunch, and they sat down—and Amy said, “Okay, what’s up.”

Lucy stared at her as they were handed menus. “I—what?”

“You’re doing that biting lip thing you do when you’ve got something important to say and you’re worried about it.” Amy thanked the server, then turned back to Lucy. “So? What is it?”

Well.

Lucy looked down at her menu but couldn’t read any of the words. She had to try and remind herself how to breathe.

“Lucy?” Amy gently nudged Lucy’s leg with her foot. “You okay?”

She looked up and met Amy’s gaze. “Yes. I’m fine.” She set the menu down. “I’m pregnant.”

“What!?” Amy’s shriek made a few other tables look over.

Lucy glared at her.

Amy cleared her throat and leaned in, whispering. “Sorry, sorry, a baby? Really?”

“You sound surprised.”

“Well, I mean—I knew you guys wanted kids but I thought that it would be, hey Amy, we’re going to try for a kid, y’know? I thought you guys would… plan it.” Amy winced, as if she knew this made them sound like teenagers who’d fooled around in the back of the car.

Lucy sighed. “We—we didn’t—we knew that we wanted children but we sort of put off talking about it. It’s… painful for us. For different reasons.”

Amy cocked her head. “Mom.”

Lucy nodded. “I… the mom that I remember is not the mom that… she wasn’t Rittenhouse. So I have—all these good memories, growing up. I mean she wasn’t perfect. She was controlling, and a perfectionist, but—we co-wrote a couple history books together, for crying out loud, she was—we were close.

“And then all those memories are gone, and it’s… it’s this woman who’s like her but not like her at all, and fanatical and all the good things about her that I remember are twisted into something awful and all the frustrating things about her are even worse and I…” Lucy realized she was gripping the menu so hard that it was shaking and quickly set it down. “She thought that she was doing the right thing. What if… I think I’m doing the right thing, and I end up—being awful without realizing?”

Amy reached across and took Lucy’s hand. “Well, first of all, that’s why you don’t parent alone.”

“There are single parents—”

“But they don’t parent alone. Not really. Nobody should. They have their parents, and friends, and other fellow parents. You have Wyatt and Flynn and even if you didn’t you’d have me, and Rufus and Jiya, and Dave, and Denise and Michelle. Even Mason if you really needed him.” Amy squeezed her hand. “You’re going to have people to help you so that you don’t turn out that way. We are not bound to repeat the mistakes of our parents, all right? You know I don’t believe in that bullshit and neither should you.”

Lucy nodded, squeezing back. “I… I don’t know if I completely… if I’m sure I believe that, yet.”

“Well if you were sure, then it wouldn’t be faith, now would it?” Amy replied, winking.

“I’m not sure how—our entire religion is about questioning, arguing, challenging—”

“I meant faith in yourself,” Amy replied. “Yourself, Lucy. You’ve done so much already. When are you going to believe that you’re a good person.”

Lucy pulled her hand away. “When I am one, and I’m…”

“You were a person trapped in an impossible situation where your options were bad and worse, there was no black and white, and the one objectively awful thing you did was done in a moment of a total psychological breakdown when your husband was being murdered.”

“Don’t forget that I worked for Rittenhouse.”

“Against your will while I was being held hostage. Lucy.” Amy gave her a smile. “Cut yourself some slack. Why are you willing to forgive everyone but yourself? So you sort of believed Rittenhouse in your timeline, to start. You realized it was wrong and you were going to leave, why else would they have used me as collateral for you? We all do wrong things sometimes. We all make mistakes. But you’re aware of them and you fix them. And that’s what matters. You’re going to fuck it up with this kid, Lucy, we all fuck up sometimes as parents, as friends, as partners. We’re human. But you’re also going to be good for them. I promise.”

“And you’ll tell me if I’m not?”

Amy nodded. “I promise.”

Lucy let go of her sister’s hand as the server came up to take their order.

 

* * *

 

Wyatt liked to drive when he was upset.

It was leftover from when he was a kid and it was the only way he could escape his dad. He could go hide out in Jess’s place, but his dad would inevitably call Mr. Moore, Jess’s dad, and the fucker could be charming and persuasive. Wyatt had always assumed that was how Dad had gotten Mom to marry him.

So that left the car.

Sure, Dad would always be in a fucking temper over the car being taken, but if Wyatt timed it right, he would be able to get back when Dad was in a stupor and he could just slip upstairs to bed.

He would drive and drive and drive, pretending there was an end to the horizon, and that if he drove hard and fast and far enough, he could fall off it.

Now, though, he didn’t just drive away.

He drove towards.

After circling the neighborhood a few times, he took a different turn, and found himself in a new neighborhood.

If Michelle was worried to see him turning up on her doorstep in the middle of the day on a weekend, she didn’t say so. “C’mon in, Denise is in the living room.”

Denise was indeed in the living room, reading _Where’d You Go, Bernadette?_

She looked up as Wyatt was brought in, like a puppy that Michelle had found in the rain. “Wyatt.”

“Ah, Denise, ma’am, hey. You uh…” Wyatt shuffled his feet, feeling like he might list over. “You got a minute? Sorry to bother you guys…”

“It’s not a bother.” Denise put down her book, and patted the couch next to her. Wyatt sat down as Michelle murmured something about getting some water.

Denise fixed him with a look. “Everything okay back home?”

Wyatt could remember people sometimes asking him about that when he was a kid, and how he’d always said yes, because he hadn’t believed that they could really save him from his father. “Everything’s… fine, I’m just… freaking out.” He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “Lucy’s pregnant.”

Denise sat up a little straighter. “Are they excited?”

Wyatt nodded. “Garcia’s always wanted to be a dad again. And Lucy… she said, a while ago while we were still back in the bunker, that she wanted two. And, y’know, we just had our big break, our vacation, and we’re back in the swing of things. Lucy’s angling for tenure and the security firm is doing well so it’s a good time…”

“But…” Denise prompted.

“But…”

For all that he had wanted children, he’d never fully embraced the idea that he was fit to have them.

“I’m happy,” Wyatt said, fighting through his closed throat. “I want this kid—I want to be good for them, I want it so badly it feels like I’m fucking—drowning or something but—fuck, Denise, you know how bad I was messed up. I mean, not just my dad but when you all met me… I fucked up, with Flynn and going after Jess and all the rest and… how could I ever? What if I just—what if it just slips out? That anger, that abuse? I could never—I don’t want—what idiot would put vulnerable, put _kids_ , in my hands?”

Denise reached over and took his hands and Wyatt realized that he was close to hyperventilating, his eyes stinging, his breath coming in short and choppy. “Well, first of all, every parent struggles with anger and frustration. You’re not alone. And there are groups you can go to, and you can get a therapist or counselor like Lucy has.”

Michelle came in with two glasses of water, and then vanished again. Wyatt took one, struggling to sip it, still feeling like he was choking.

“You want to know who would put kids in your hands?” Denise asked, taking her own glass. “Lucy and Flynn. I’m not saying that you didn’t royally cock up sometimes. But you also were there for them when they needed you. And you’re all happy, aren’t you?”

Wyatt nodded. They were stupidly happy. Lucy was finally out of her depression and was enjoying work—that vacation had done wonders for her, put the smile back in her eyes—and Flynn was doing that wonderfully stupidly romantic shit where he would bring wine and flowers home just because.

“People who are abusive, are just like those childhood bullies in the schoolyard. They are unable to be happy, and they don’t know why, and so they try to take that unhappiness out on those around them. Maybe it’s because they’re depressed or struggling with an addiction. Maybe it’s because they have trauma and pain that they haven’t addressed. Maybe it’s that they hate themselves.”

“What if you’re three for three,” Wyatt joked darkly.

He had hated himself. He’d been depressed, addicted to his codependent relationship with Jess, unwilling to face the trauma of his dad, of war, and filled with self-loathing over his own bad choices, over Jess’s death, over his repressed bisexuality.

“You’re not that way anymore, Wyatt.” Denise stared him down. “I’ve seen a lot of bigots in my time, you know. Racist, homophobic assholes. And they’ve taught me something. Hate comes from fear. Fear comes from love—the fear that you will lose what you love. Your sense of self. Your sense of importance. It all boils down to love. And you are no longer operating from a base of fear. Are you?”

Wyatt shook his head. “No, ma’am.”

“Then I think you’re going to be fine. Just like when we get those thoughts… we’re sitting at a stoplight, and we get the thought to take our foot off the brake and drive right into the traffic. It’s intrusive. That thought doesn’t matter so much as the next thing that we think: no, I won’t do that. I will keep my foot on the brake. You’re going to have times when you want to scream at your kid, or snap at them. It’s natural. What matters is that you’ll stop yourself.”

Wyatt took a few more sips of the water, then nodded.

“They love you, and they want to have a child with you,” Denise pointed out. “That’s no small thing. I would trust them, even if you can’t yet trust yourself. Talk to them about it.”

Wyatt nodded again, and drank the rest of the water.

Okay.

 

* * *

 

“You know, I expected you to turn me down,” Flynn noted, helping Rufus pick out the equipment he’d need. Rufus should really get his own jacket and foil and all the rest, but for now the club had decent stuff he could use, if a little secondhand.

“You offered to help me learn how to poke people with a sword, that’s cool no matter what time period we’re in,” Rufus replied, dutifully testing a helmet. “So, what’s going on with you guys? Wyatt’s been acting weirdly squirrelly.”

Wyatt had been very quiet and on edge lately, although he’d tried to hide it from Flynn and Lucy. They were actually on their way to a joint therapy appointment right then—Lucy and Wyatt, that is—to discuss the whole kid thing since Flynn and Lucy weren’t fucking blind and knew why Wyatt was struggling.

“Ah. Yeah. The thing is…” Flynn took that helmet from Rufus and handed him another one. “…Jesus why is your head so big…”

“It’s to hold in all the brains, next question.”

“We are—we’re good. All’s good, just—Lucy’s pregnant.”

Rufus dropped the helmet on the floor and Flynn winced at the _thud_ that it made.

A few fencers over by the targets looked over, then shrugged and went back to arguing over something.

“Pregnant?” Rufus whispered, picking up the helmet. “Isn’t that—you guys just got back from galivanting around Europe like you’re an 18th century aristocrat trying to find himself.”

“The jab against Lord Byron is duly noted.”

“I just thought you guys would, y’know, take a little more time.”

“It wasn’t really… planned. Traveling messed with Lucy’s schedule and we got sloppy.” But hey, they weren’t a one night stand in college. He and his spouses were married, for crying out loud, they owned a house together, they were committed.

“And Wyatt’s…”

“Yeah.”

“How about you?” Rufus asked, letting Flynn lead him through the club to find an empty strip. “How’re you holding up?”

The thing was, unlike Lucy and Wyatt, Flynn didn’t doubt that he’d be a good father. He had panicked a bit when Iris was born, understandably, as every new parent panicked. But he had loved being a father, had felt something clicking into place that he hadn’t known was missing. He was excited, eager to be that again.

He just…

“I feel… guilt.” Flynn got Rufus to a strip. “I know it doesn’t make sense, but…”

“Yeah, I get it. I felt that way a lot when Mason and I got so close, I felt like—he would never replace my mom, y’know? So I talked to her about it and… she just laughed. She was fine. I think Iris—I think she’d be fine.”

Flynn nodded. “Yeah.” He paused. “And there’s… the fear of losing them.”

“I can’t speak to that. But we’ve all lost people, and been afraid to lose people, man, and that can’t stop us. We can’t let it stop us. Otherwise why bother loving people at all?”

Flynn adjusted Rufus’s grip on his blade, then showed him how to widen his stance a little, keep his balance, and drop his weight.

“Of course.” That was—it was stupid of him, to forget that. He could lose Lucy or Wyatt or anyone at any moment. And he already loved this child. It was too late to turn back. There was nothing to do but to move forward, and love, and see how it went.

“All right.” Flynn walked around to face Rufus, dropping into his own stance. “En garde.”

 

* * *

 

Lucy always felt drained after a therapy session. She didn’t want to talk to anyone or feel any emotion ever again.

She was lying on the couch letting _Mystery Science Theatre 3000_ play in the background as Wyatt lay upstairs napping when the front door opened.

Flynn took one look at her, knew what was up, and went upstairs to shower. One episode later, he was back down again, this time with a sleepy-looking Wyatt in tow.

“How was fencing?” Lucy asked, staring into the middle distance, her eyes unfocused. The morning sickness had passed and now there were other signs—her breasts getting heavy, aches starting up in her body.

“Fun. He’s clumsy but he’ll get there.” Flynn directed Wyatt to sit on the couch, then went into the kitchen to get coffee. “I, uh, owe you a bit of an apology.”

“What?” Lucy sat up. “What apology—Garcia, you’ve been perfect.” Unlike she and Wyatt, who had been freaking out.

Flynn brought the coffee over. “I was scared—scared about losing this child and having to—to go through that loss all over again. And that fear hasn’t entirely gone away. But I was reminded that I shouldn’t let that fear hold me back, and I want to—to remind you that I want this. I’m excited for this. I am.”

“We had a long talk,” Lucy said, taking the coffee that Flynn offered. “And came to the… same conclusion. We’re not scared for the same reasons. We’re scared of failing.”

“Of fucking our kid up,” Wyatt elaborated.

“But we do want them.”

“And hey, if nothing else,” Wyatt added, “we know that you’ll be a great dad. And we’re excited for that.”

They had talked quite a lot about that—and they wanted to give this to Flynn. They wanted him to get to be a father again, and they wanted to see him be a father, and they trusted that even if they fucked up, Flynn wouldn’t. Flynn would be the best parent out of the three of them. Even if he was probably not convinced of that.

Flynn handed Wyatt his coffee and then settled next to Lucy, draping his arm over her. She settled into his warmth, inhaled the fresh, clean, deep smell of him from the shower. “I want children with you two,” he said, his voice a comforting rumble in her ear. “You will both make good parents. I know it.”

Wyatt made a noise that might have been crying, but he quickly buried it by sipping his coffee.

Flynn draped a leg over Wyatt’s lap, nudging him.

Wyatt dropped his hand onto Flynn’s ankle, squeezing, his face red and eyes bright.

“We’re having a baby,” Lucy said, and this time, the word wasn’t squeezed out, but flowed easily from her mouth.

Flynn kissed her hair. “Yes. We’re going to be parents.”

Lucy held onto him, and thought that perhaps they wouldn’t entirely fuck this up after all. Not with Flynn there, at least.

 

* * *

 

Wyatt tried to keep his heart from leaping out of his damn mouth as they parked and got out of the car, the two of them helping Lucy.

“I feel like a penguin,” she noted.

“A very beautiful one,” Flynn replied.

Flynn was the one who was good about complimenting Lucy even as her stomach swelled and she bitched about not being able to see her feet. Wyatt was not always so good, so he had learned new appreciation for the phrase ‘silence is golden’.

“We’ll be just in time for the parade,” Lucy said. “And we’re finding face painting. I want face painting.”

“I’ll skip that, thanks,” Flynn said.

“Hey, you guys made it!” Jiya came bounding up wearing the Critical Role ‘be kind to one another’ LGBT shirt. Rufus trailed behind her, looking like the summer heat was already getting to him. “Denise and Michelle are around here somewhere with the kids, Mason said he’s stuck in traffic.”

She grabbed Lucy’s hand and started leading her towards the main artery of the Pride festival. Wyatt took a shaky breath—and felt Flynn’s fingers interlock with his.

An old fear made his chest seize up—two men, two _men_ , they couldn’t—but then he remembered when and where they were, and his shoulders slumped, his chest loosened. Here, he could hold Flynn’s hand as much as he wanted. They still had to be… careful. There were those that didn’t exactly enjoy polyamory, which was why Jiya, Rufus, and Mason were making a point to join them. Jiya was demi and Mason was aro but neither of them were huge festival people, but the goal was to create a safe circle around Lucy, Wyatt, and Flynn, to make sure they weren’t alone, especially with Lucy’s condition.

But they had to be a lot less careful in general, and for once, Wyatt could do whatever the fuck he wanted and show whatever fucking affection to his spouses, especially Flynn, that he wanted.

It felt like his whole life, denying and hiding and hating, was finally passing away and into the realm of a nightmare, and he could stand in the sunlight for the first time, and feel warmth that did not burn, and light that did not blind, because he belonged to that space, because he could stand there just as he was.

And wasn't that what this day, this month, this event was all about? Not simply for celebrating what was won but standing in the face of all that was yet to be won. Standing in front of his past and saying  _you couldn't kill me. You couldn't stamp out that part of me, no matter how hard you tried. I'm still here. All of me._ Wasn't that why they called it 'pride'? Not for self-confidence but for defiance, for rebellion, for the ability to look society in the eye and say  _no, you move_.

He hadn't always done it the right way. And God knew he'd burned a few bridges while he'd been at it and was fucking lucky that the people he loved helped him to rebuild those bridges. But he was here. He was happy. Once, he’d been scared to even say the word bi. To even look at a man. Now he was married to one, and to a woman, and he loved them both to distraction.

Not bad for a white trash criminal grunt from Nowhere, Texas.

He held onto Flynn’s hand as tightly as possible, and let the others lead him to his first Pride.

And he did end up letting Lucy persuade him to get the bi flag painted on his cheek. Just this once.


	9. Chapter 9

Lucy flipped the page, wincing a little. It was so hot out, even with the air conditioning, she was just a puddle of sweat on the couch. She was finding it hard to concentrate on her book. The contractions weren’t helping. She’d been having irregular, mild contractions for days now, so she knew that the baby was coming soon, but they were all in a holding pattern, just waiting.

Flynn was in the kitchen, teaching Wyatt how to make a crepe. “Then you…”

Lucy realized she was rather unusually wet—particularly between her legs—

She sat up and a small groan of pain escaped her. “G-Garcia,” she managed. “Wyatt?”

They both turned to her, and whatever he saw on her face made Wyatt nearly drop the pan.

Flynn quickly turned off the stove and Wyatt shoved the pan aside. “Lucy,” Flynn said, hurrying over.

“I think my water just broke,” she managed. Her legs were starting to cramp up and a wave of nausea hit her. “Okay, yup, yup, time to go, we are going.”

Wyatt dashed to the door and grabbed the car keys, since he was in charge of driving. Flynn took her hands to help her up. “All right,” he said, and she could tell that he was struggling to stay calm. “C’mon, _cher_ , I’ve got you. We’ll get you there.”

Lucy took a few deep breaths. She had practiced, they had all practiced, they could do this. Or, wait, what, it wasn’t them, it was her. Wyatt and Flynn, as much as she loved them, weren’t the ones doing this, she was, dammit.

Well. She’d gone up against Rittenhouse and won. She’d defeated Emma. She’d faced history and parallel timelines and her own mother. She’d played double agent, she had endured week after painful week with Flynn dead. She had dipped her soul into the darkness and she’d come back.

She could handle some goddamn labor pains and bring her child into the world.

 

* * *

 

Flynn watched as Wyatt paced back and forth. He appreciated Wyatt’s restless energy, but he also wanted to tell him to sit down.

Amy and Denise were in the labor room with Lucy. They had all discussed it weeks ago. Flynn didn’t see what use he and Wyatt could be in there other than just standing by, and no man could truly understand what his wife, a woman, was going through, and Flynn suspected that Lucy was going to start hurling curses and profanities at the both of them for doing this to her.

When he’d gone through it all with Lorena, he’d been in the room with her. Held her hand and tried to encourage her through it. Afterwards, Lorena had given him a warm, wane smile, and told him that if they had another child, he was staying outside next time.

“ _Liebling_ ,” he said quietly. “Sit down.”

Wyatt made a strangled noise. “I just…” He shook his head. “There’s so much that could go wrong…”

“I hate to break it to you, _štene_ , but childbirth is not this mysterious deadly thing that is beyond our comprehension. She’s going to be okay.”

“I read too many articles online,” Wyatt admitted, laughing half-hysterically at himself. “I know, I know, we’re in the 21st century, but fuckin’… misogyny and shit, there’s all this stuff that women still aren’t educated on and all this bullshit that still goes on… and I know she’ll be fine I just…”

Flynn held out his hand, and Wyatt grabbed onto it, walking over and gripping so tightly that Flynn thought he might actually lose circulation in his hand. “I get it. Trust me, I was the same way with Lorena. But Lucy’s tough, and she’s going to be okay.”

Wyatt finally sat down next to him, nodding. Flynn encouraged him to lean into him, until Wyatt was resting his head on Flynn’s shoulder.

Flynn wrapped his arm around Wyatt and tried to remember his own advice, breathing quietly and steadily, until at last the door opened and Denise stepped through.

She looked tired, her hair falling out a little from the bun she’d placed it in, but she was smiling. “Boys, come in and meet your daughter.”

Wyatt bolted to his feet, took two steps, then swayed on the spot. Flynn caught him and nodded at Denise, then led his husband in.

Lucy was sitting on the bed, propped up by pillows, Amy sitting next to her and holding her hand, smiling wide enough to split her face. Lucy was smiling as well, but she was more tired and wane.

And in her arms was a small bundle.

Flynn felt like his heart wasn’t in his body anymore. He walked over, barely feeling it, until he found himself reaching out without even consciously being aware of it—and Lucy placed the baby girl in his arms.

They had picked out names ahead of time but decided to wait for the gender to be a surprise, since they didn’t give a fuck about buying gendered baby items for the kid. Flynn gently cradled the baby in the crook of his arm. Jesus, she was only a little bigger than his hand, or so it felt, with her big sleepy blue eyes and little nose.

“Hello Maria,” he whispered. “ _Zdravo draga_.”

Wyatt sat down on the edge of the bed like his legs were giving out on him. “You okay Luce?”

Lucy nodded and hummed. “Tired, but I’m okay.”

Wyatt keeled over, pressing his head into her lap, and Lucy laughed softly, threading her fingers through his hair.

Maria blinked up at Flynn, then burbled, her tiny hand wrapping around his finger. It felt like his heart was going to burst, like it wasn’t inside him anymore, but inside of her.

He sat down, shoulder to shoulder with Lucy, as Amy quietly made her excuses and slipped out. Wyatt looked up, staring at her. “She’s got your nose, Luce.”

“And your lung capacity,” Lucy replied, gently teasing.

They’d decided to name the child Maria if a girl, so that even though she was biologically Lucy and Wyatt’s, there was no doubt that she was also Flynn’s. Flynn cradled her close to his chest, and watched as her eyes closed and she curled into him, falling sleep as naturally as breathing.

Wyatt reached out, his hand shaking, and gently pet through the downy hair on her head.

They’d done it. They were actually parents.

Flynn was going to make sure this time—this time, he got to see his little girl grow up.

 

* * *

 

Christmas was always a big bunker family thing. Denise didn’t celebrate it but Michelle had grown up Baptist before becoming a Buddhist so they had a kind of secular ‘yay presents’ thing with the kids. Rufus didn’t believe in the religious aspect but he wasn’t going to say that to his mom and he definitely wasn’t going to turn down people putting Chocodiles in his stocking. Jiya had said she wasn’t into it until Mason had gotten her a fancy new coffeemaker and one of the Starfleet uniforms from the _Star Trek Beyond_ film and then she was all for it. Mason, of course, loved the chance to play Santa. Flynn had most definitely grown up with it and they were all going to have a good Christmas goddammit come hell or high water. Lucy’s family had been kind of split on the holidays thing, understandably, and Dave just wanted to know if he was still allowed to make latkes.

For Wyatt, Christmas had always been… well, shit.

Gramps had worked hard to make Christmas nice, when he’d still been around, but they’d never had a lot of money. Wyatt’s family had always been the definition of white trash, and then after Gramps had died… it had only gotten worse.

Wyatt had always resented the holiday, because he’d resented how into it everyone else got. Everyone made it such a big deal, this huge day for getting presents and seeing family. It had only reminded Wyatt of the family he didn’t have, reminded him of all the things he was lacking.

Once he was with Jess, Christmas had been okay. But it had been small. They’d never had a lot of money, and oftentimes Wyatt would be on tour or on a mission once he was in Delta, and it wasn’t really a thing, even if it was no longer straight-up awful.

He used to drink a lot, on Christmas.

Slowly but surely, though, he’d started to find things to like about the holiday again, spending it in the bunker with everyone. No matter how bad things got, they all kind of agreed that this was a point that they could fixate on and make happy. One goddamn day where things could go well. They had stolen each other presents from historical time periods. Denise had knit them all stockings with their names on them, and then scarves. Mason had taught them all how to dance and played his records.

It had been a family day.

And now—now that they were out of the bunker, and back in their normal lives, it was still a family day. And bit by bit, Wyatt could feel his resentment towards the holiday ebb away as the bad memories were overwritten with good ones.

This year, there was a definite theme to the holiday, which was: spoil the new baby rotten.

After some frustration and debate and tears, Lucy had decided that if possible she would like to give Maria the middle name of Carol. The mother that Lucy had known was a good woman, and despite her flaws, she had raised Lucy well and Lucy had, overall, good memories of her. Positive memories. Lucy wanted to honor the Carol that had turned away from Rittenhouse, the Carol that had two daughters and loved them both.

And little Maria Carol had everyone wrapped around her little fingers.

Wyatt had been fielding questions from everyone about what to get her, and he already knew that she was going to get more presents than she could handle. But before they went over to Mason’s house—his was the biggest—they took time for themselves.

Maria was still asleep upstairs as Wyatt and the other two tiptoed downstairs to put the coffee on and exchange their personal gifts. He was excited to join everyone else later, but this—this moment, this early morning time with the dawn creeping over the horizon and the oddly still, sacred feeling that came with it—was just for them, and Wyatt cherished that just as much.

Lucy curled up in her bathrobe, smiling as she took her present from the coffee table. “You didn’t steal me a painting again, did you?”

“No, no jumping through history,” Wyatt promised, sitting down next to her. Flynn walked over with the coffee, passing a mug to Wyatt and setting Lucy’s on the table.

Lucy undid her present, smiling as it was revealed as a beautiful leather-bound new journal. She gave the both of them a playful glare. Flynn just chuckled.

Wyatt got his next. He already knew or suspected what it would be. The tradition had started as a joke. Lucy had gleefully noticed that Flynn was jealous not of other people but, of all things, Wyatt’s collar that he wore occasionally when they were having sex. So Lucy had gotten Wyatt a collar that said PUPPY on it, because she liked to tease both of them. Flynn had remarked that she should have gotten one that said BRAT.

The next year, that had been the exact collar Wyatt had gotten.

Wyatt undid the wrapping, and sure enough, it was a collar, this one black with the words done in silver calligraphy on it, rather fancy considering what was written on it: COCK SLUT.

Lucy howled with laughter as Wyatt flipped her off and Flynn choked on his coffee. “You didn’t tell me that was what it would say!” Flynn hissed at her.

“Of course not, I had to see the look on your face!” Lucy gasped, tears leaking out the corners of her eyes.

Flynn glared at the collar like it had told him that it was going to have a torrid affair with Wyatt and convince Wyatt to leave them and go off to live across the country.

Wyatt had a feeling Lucy already had plenty of ideas on how to use said collar, though, not that they’d get much of a chance until Maria was sleeping regularly through the night. It had been four months of nothing but snatched moments in the shower or in bed at night, fucking roughly and desperately, and not that Wyatt didn’t appreciate it but… he was looking forward to being able to take their time again.

“All right then,” he said, nudging Flynn. “Open yours then, if you’re so offended by mine.”

Flynn flipped him off but grabbed the box with his name on it. Wyatt and Lucy jostled shoulders excitedly. Flynn was difficult to figure out presents for, but Wyatt suspected they’d done well this time.

At only four months old, Maria obviously couldn’t speak or read, but Flynn spoke to her in Croatian, singing her lullabies and joking with her, and Lucy and Wyatt wanted it clear that Flynn’s heritage was just as important as theirs.

Flynn was silent as he opened up the box and saw what was inside: a bunch of _How to Learn Croatian_ books for adults, and several children’s books that Lucy and Wyatt had ordered from Croatia that Maria could use to learn how to read.

“We figured,” Lucy said quietly, “that it was about time we started to learn Croatian. At least a little of it.”

Flynn carefully set the box down, his eyes unusually bright, and leaned across the couch to Lucy, bracing his hand on Wyatt’s knee to kiss her. Then he turned, taking Wyatt’s face in his hands, and did the same to him. Lucy leaned in, pressing her forehead against theirs, and for a moment it was just the three of them, holding on, breathing together.

Then Maria’s wail sounded over the baby monitor, and Wyatt laughed. “She’s damn lucky she’s cute,” he commented, getting up. “I’ll grab her.”

Maria was sitting up in her crib looking rather put out. Wyatt grabbed her. “Hey, ladybug, we’re here. C’mon, you want Mama, don’t you? We’ll get you downstairs to her.”

Yeah, Christmas had gotten a lot better in recent years.

 

* * *

 

Flynn was pretty sure it started as a throwaway comment.

Amy and Dave didn’t want kids, but they did want a cat, so they were looking at adopting a couple older cats since it was usually kittens that got adopted.

“It’s the same with kids,” Lucy said. They were all sitting on the couches relaxing, Maria napping on Flynn’s chest. Wyatt was sitting on the floor with the dogs, who were draped over his knees, and he was nuzzling into Flynn’s hand like an oversized puppy himself as Flynn played with his hair.

Rufus and Jiya were curled up on the armchair, Lucy was at Flynn’s feet on the couch, and Amy and Dave were sprawled out on the floor.

“Honestly, if we were going to have kids, I’d adopt,” Amy said. “After what I saw you go though in the delivery room? No thanks. And there are already so many kids out there that need love.”

“I could never deal with a baby, though,” Jiya said. “I’m awful with them.”

“Maria loves you,” Flynn pointed out, gesturing at his sleeping six-month-old.

“It’s different when you’re an aunt,” Jiya pointed out.

“Then just adopt an older kid,” Dave said. “They have much lower adoption rates. Most people want a baby or a toddler. Older kids get dumped into the foster system.”

“We could foster all the problem kids,” Rufus joked.

Yeah, Flynn was ninety percent sure that was a throwaway comment.

But after that, Rufus and Jiya started… making that comment more and more. Bringing it up casually in conversation. Discussing how adoption worked.

“I think maybe you should talk to Rufus about this,” Flynn noted, pouring coffee for both of them as Jiya bounced Maria up and down and cooed at her. Lucy was at the college and Midnight and Buster were engaging Wyatt in a rousing game of ‘give me back my shoe’.

“Talk to Rufus about what?” Jiya asked, sounded legitimately confused.

“About how you want to start fostering a kid,” Flynn said, passing her coffee (two sugars, no milk).

Jiya spluttered for a second. “I do not—I don’t want to—I’m…” She paused. “I mean… we haven’t ever really… he helped raise his brother and all that. I wasn’t ever sure he’d want to have kids, y’know?”

Flynn shrugged and sipped at his coffee. “I don’t know. Seems to me that he was the one who first brought up the subject, and he’s been mentioning it just as often as you have.”

Jiya watched him nervously for a moment, biting her lip. “How do you… not screw it up?”

Flynn raised an eyebrow. “Oh, you’re going to screw it up.”

Jiya blanched.

Flynn took Maria from Jiya and started warming up a bottle for her. Maria began to chew on Flynn’s shirt. “You’re going to screw some things up, just like you’ve screwed things up in your friendships, and your romantic relationships, and with your parents. We’re human, Jiya, that’s how it works.”

He tested the milk to see if it was too hot, then switched to cradling Maria. She reached out for the bottle, making little babbling noises.

Flynn shushed her soothingly, feeding her the bottle. “But you’re going to be doing this out of love, and you’re willing to admit your mistakes, and that’s what matters.”

Jiya sipped her coffee for a few moments in silence, and then nodded. “You make it seem easy, you know. And I know that it’s not easy. For any parent. But especially for you, after everything—and then, even more after what you lost. So if—if you can make it look easy to me, if you can do a good job of it—then I know I can. Or I at least… I owe it to myself to try.”

Flynn found his chest getting tight and he nodded, knowing that if he tried to speak he’d end up making a very embarrassing croaking noise instead of words. He looked down at Maria, who was contentedly sucking at her bottle and looking up at him with her big blue eyes, like he was the most fascinating thing in the world.

Flynn kissed her forehead. “Yeah, well. Trying is all we can really do.”

 

* * *

 

Lucy glared at the little app on her phone.

The app did not care for the glaring and didn’t change what it was saying on the screen.

Lucy peeked out of the bedroom window.

Flynn was in the backyard playing with the dogs while Wyatt was sitting on the porch with Maria, blowing bubbles.

Lucy slipped down the stairs and grabbed her shoes. “Gotta run to the store!” she called out over her shoulder.

The first time she had done this, she had nearly thrown up at the very thought. The house had felt too small and she’d burst out into the backyard, grabbing handfuls of dirt, sucking in air, chest heaving, feeling like she might burst out of her own skin.

Even after she had gathered herself enough to go to the store, she had been trembling. Scared like she hadn’t been scared in ages.

 _This can’t be happening_ , she’d thought. _I’m not ready. I won’t be good at it. How could I possibly?_

Instead of joy or elation, she had felt fear.

But now…

Now she went to the store, purchased the test, came home, slipped into the bathroom—and found herself hoping.

 _I want two,_ she had said, once, and she’d meant it. And she knew that Flynn and Wyatt agreed. Maria would love a sibling…

And this time—this time when Wyatt and Flynn came in (with Wyatt still holding Maria, who seemed more interested in sucking on her fingers than anything else), she wasn’t just shoving the stick at them, ready to cry, silently begging for comfort. No, this time she was smiling, and it felt like she was going to burst out of her own skin but with happiness and anticipation.

“Luce,” Wyatt said, his jaw dropping, hope radiating in his eyes. “Are—wait, really?”

Flynn staggered back as if physically struck, and when Lucy nodded, he crossed to her and lifted her up, spinning her around, and she thought, _oh, this. This is what it’s supposed to feel like._

This was how it was supposed to be when you found out you were pregnant.


	10. Chapter 10

Flynn didn’t often find himself staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night anymore. His insomnia had gotten better since the defeat of Rittenhouse, but every so often… it came back.

He just couldn’t sometimes shake the fear that once again Lucy or Wyatt would wake up and say, “I think I heard…” and he would have his family ripped away from him all over again. And it didn’t have to be Rittenhouse. He’d made plenty of enemies in his work against corrupt countries, working in civil wars. It was why he had worked so hard to become an NSA asset, to make friends in the states—he hated the U.S. war machine but he’d had a wife and she was pregnant and he’d needed the safest place for his kid, away from any pissed-off former dictators.

What if one of those people found him again? What if they missed a Rittenhouse member? What if…

Lucy’s nightmares after Emma’s murder had kept them all up for a bit and Wyatt would have night terrors where he couldn’t remember where he was and Flynn had to gently wake him out of it, but for Flynn, he just… couldn’t sleep at all.

He lay awake, propped up on one elbow, watching Lucy and Wyatt sleep. Wyatt had his face buried in Lucy’s neck, his arm flung over her waist, and Lucy was sprawled out on her stomach, enjoying sleeping like that while she could before her stomach swelled again with their second child.

Their second child. Lucy was pregnant again. They were going to have another baby, a sibling for Maria.

Maria. His daughter. His… second daughter.

Flynn left his spouses and slipped out of bed, walking silently down the hall and entering Maria’s room.

She was asleep on her stomach like her mother, her dark curls spread out around her on the bed like a black halo in the darkness. She had Wyatt’s blue eyes, and her hair was darker than either Iris’s or Lorena’s, taking after Lucy.

Flynn leaned on the crib, watching her little chest rising and falling. His baby girl.

Someday he would tell her about her older sister. When Maria was old enough to understand that. She wouldn’t know the full truth until much older. But she could know she had a sister who was loved, and who had died too soon.

Iris wouldn’t be forgotten or replaced.

Flynn reached down, gently stroking Maria’s hair. She didn’t stir but made a slight humming noise.

“Oh, darling.”

Flynn turned to see Lucy standing there, arms wrapped around herself. He also realized with a jolt that dawn was breaking over the horizon. He’d been standing staring down at his daughter for much longer than he’d thought.

“I was just…” He cleared his throat. “Just checking up on her.”

Lucy nodded, walking over and wrapping her arms around him, resting her head on his shoulder and staring down into the crib. “She reminds me so much of you.”

“She’s not even a year old.”

“And she’s already stubborn and too smart for her own good,” Lucy replied. She tightened her grip a little. “And she’s going to grow up. Far too fast for our liking. And she’s going to live a long, happy life.”

“I want to believe that.”

“It’s okay if you don’t. We’ll believe it for you.” Lucy pulled back, taking his hand. “Come back to bed. It’s cold without you.”

Flynn let her lead him back, curling up on her other side because Lucy was a heat hog, but he double checked the baby monitor, just to be sure.

Wyatt opened one eye blearily, then closed it again, blindly groping for Flynn with his hand. Flynn settled in and intertwined their fingers over Lucy’s waist.

He didn’t sleep—just lay there half-dozing—but he had a feeling of peace, now, and that was all he needed.

 

* * *

 

Lucy paused, her smile a little frozen. “Um. I just… told you I was pregnant again.”

“Yes.” Dr. Roberts paused in her note taking.

“So why do you have that look on your face?”

Dr. Roberts put aside the notebook. “Lucy, when you told me that you were pregnant with Maria, you were crying. You spent ten minutes trying to get the words out. And just now you told me that you were pregnant again as easy as anything.”

“I mean—I’m nervous,” Lucy admitted. “What parent isn’t? But… but I’m happy. We wanted two kids, we wanted Maria to have a sibling and now they’ll be close in age.”

“And you don’t have any fears about losing this child, or being a bad parent?”

“Sometimes,” Lucy admitted. “I found Garcia watching Maria a couple weeks ago, he couldn’t sleep. Wyatt sometimes has nightmares where he wakes up and he’s in Iraq again. I have worries. But… but Maria’s okay. She’s okay, and she’s happy, and she loves us. You should see her face light up when Garcia walks into the room. She reaches for him and she—she can’t talk yet but she babbles at him, has whole conversations with him. And she spends all day with Wyatt, he reads to her and the dogs worship her, honestly. Midnight seems to think Maria’s her puppy.

“We’re… I’m happy, for this baby, and is that—is that such a bad thing? We’re going to be good parents to this baby, we are, and Maria’s going to be a good sister, and she’s going to love her sibling, and it’s… the nightmares are getting less frequent, and we’re settling in, and… and it’s good, and it’s okay that it’s good! That’s how it’s supposed to be!”

Dr. Roberts held up her hand. “It is good. I just wanted to hear you actually claim your happiness. We’ve spent a long time here together and you keep refusing to accept that you can deserve happiness and that this whole matter with Rittenhouse can really be over. And now here you are, doing just that.” Dr. Roberts smiled at her. “You’re happy, Lucy, and that’s how it should be.”

Lucy stared at her for a moment, and she realized Dr. Roberts was right.

She grinned. “Yeah. Yeah I do deserve to be happy. We deserve it.” She pressed her hand to her stomach. “And we’re going to be. We are, and we’re going to keep being happy.”

Dr. Roberts smiled at her and nodded.

 

* * *

 

Wyatt bounced Maria on his knees. “Pony girl, pony girl, won’t you be my pony girl,” he sang, bouncing her. “don’t say no, here we go, riding across the plains!”

Maria giggled wildly as he bounced her along until his legs got tired and he finally set her down on the blanket he’d laid out, where Maria immediately reached for Buster.

They said that being loved was submitting to the mortifying ordeal of being known. Unless you were a dog with a baby, in which case love was submitting to the mortifying ordeal of having one’s ears yanked.

Wyatt grinned, standing up and walking over to the kitchen. Every day was like this, and to be honest he loved it more than having a career or an outside job. Lucy loved her work and Flynn loved his, but Wyatt didn’t have anything—he’d never had anything he was passionate about. He did Delta, he was a soldier, because he was good at it and what else was out there for him with his history? But it wasn’t like he was all for Uncle Sam after everything he’d done and seen as a part of the American military.

Being with his baby girl, though, getting to watch her grow up and all the little changes she went through, the light in her eyes when she found something interesting or learned something new… it was fulfilling. And he knew—he knew that she would grow up loved, and valued, and that was what mattered.

“Da?”

Wyatt froze.

“Da? Da?”

He turned around, swallowing hard.

Maria was staring at him with a smile on her face. “Da!” She made grabby hands at him.

Buster, lying on the ground, looked up at Wyatt as if to say _she means you, you idiot_.

“Yeah,” Wyatt managed. He cleared his throat, his eyes stinging. “Yeah, ladybug, that’s me.”

Maria burbled at him, then crawled over to his feet, hoisting herself up on his leg and tugging on his jeans. “Da!”

Wyatt picked her up and Maria squeaked happily. Wyatt held her close, feeling like his heart was throwing itself up out of his mouth. “Um, yeah, I can keep holding you. Sure.”

He thought that maybe it was a fluke, but she did it again later on, as Wyatt tried to put her down for a nap. “Da!” she stuck out her bottom lip, looking extremely unhappy.

“You gotta take a nap, ladybug, I don’t make the rules. It’s good for you.”

Maria just sniffled. She had quickly learned, to everyone’s dismay, that if she sniffled and looked sad people would give her what she wanted. “Da?”

“Okay, you can sleep on me.” He picked her back up and held her, rocking her. Maria rested her head on his shoulder, humming to herself as she often did. Wyatt sang quietly until she grew heavy, and then slipped into the bathroom to check Maria’s reflection in the mirror to make sure she was really asleep.

He didn’t want to risk waking her by moving her, and he also… he also didn’t want to stop holding her. How much longer would she be this small? This young?

Instead he went downstairs and put the football game on, walking back and forth with Maria so she had that rocking motion she liked.

Lucy walked in, grumbling about something or other—and stopped short. “Um, sweetheart, is everything okay? You look like you’ve been crying.”

Wyatt hadn’t realized. “Um. A little. She—”

Maria stirred and sat up, blinking and looking around. Then she awkwardly patted Wyatt’s face. “Da?”

Lucy grinned. “Ohhh, baby had her first word did she?”

Wyatt nodded. Maria turned, recognizing her mother’s voice, and shrieked at the top of her lungs.

Wyatt winced.

Lucy walked over, dropping her things to take Maria, kissing her all over. “That’s my sweet girl. You made Daddy’s day today, didn’t you?” She looked over at Wyatt. “Because he’s a good father, isn’t he?”

Maria burbled at him, and Wyatt thought that maybe—maybe he was.

 

* * *

 

Flynn frowned down at his phone as he walked through the offices. He had a small operation but a good one, and he valued his employees.

But he didn’t appreciate when they all up and disappeared on him.

“Lauren, where the hell—” He turned the corner into the conference room and froze.

Everyone was standing in a group, with Lauren, the office manager, holding a cake with _Happy Birthday_ written on it.

“I called your spouses,” Lauren said. “They snitched on you.”

Those traitorous…

“Happy birthday, boss,” Evans, one of the men he’d hired from the beginning, said. The others all chorused it.

The thing was—the thing was that long ago, he’d given up the idea of friends. Specifically when he’d been accused of murdering his wife and child.

But he’d had friends, once, and he’d had his own security firm, and he’d loved both, and he’d missed them. And although he was now getting his firm back, he had sort of given up on having friends outside of the bunker family. He’d felt like… whoever he had become couldn’t really… get back into the normal world. All his tours, that was one thing. He’d managed to come back from that. But after traveling through time? Who could relate to that? Who could possibly—how could he really make his way in the world again?

Except now, apparently, he had. And he had employees that he cared about, and they… they cared about him.

Enough to do a birthday party for him.

“Okay, okay, if you guys sing I’m firing you all,” Flynn said, rolling his eyes but failing to keep a smile from creeping in slightly.

“You’re both traitors!” he yelled when he got home.

“Oh hush, you liked it,” Lucy replied, nursing Maria on the couch. Wyatt, who was reading, grinned up at him.

Flynn sat down in between the two of them. “I admit to nothing.”

He didn’t have to.


	11. Chapter 11

The second time around was easier—everyone knew what to expect.

Flynn sat outside with Maria, waiting for the news that he could go in with her and meet the newest member of their family.

“Tata?”

“Hmm?” Flynn craned his neck to see if Wyatt was back with the coffee yet.

Maria took his face in her hands and turned him so that he was looking at her, a stern expression on her face. “Tata.”

“ _Oprosti draga, što slušam_.” He tried to speak Croatian with her whenever he could so that Maria would grow up speaking it fluently, or near-fluently. Wyatt and Lucy had been working hard and could hold stilted conversations in Croatian now, but Maria could keep up with her father’s rapid-fire speech even if she couldn’t speak much yet.

But then, her English vocabulary was still pretty limited too, so that was just where she was at.

“ _Gdje je mama_?” Maria hadn’t seen Lucy since Lucy had gone into labor two hours ago and was understandably distressed at her mother vanishing so suddenly. Lucy crying out in pain before all that hadn’t helped, either.

Maria’s labor had been difficult, sure, but this baby was… well, for one thing, Lucy’s labor had started while she was in her office after a lecture. She’d called Wyatt, who had grabbed Maria and then called Flynn. Flynn had driven straight to the university and grabbed Lucy while Wyatt had headed for the hospital to meet them there, and Lucy had immediately told Flynn that something was different this time.

For one thing, she was a couple weeks early. For another—she hadn’t been able to say what, exactly, just “it’s different, Garcia I’m worried,” over and over.

Flynn sure as hell wasn’t going to discount Lucy’s opinion in anything but especially this, so now he was trying to stay calm with Wyatt while Maria grew increasingly impatient.

“Daddy!” Maria yelled.

Flynn turned and saw Wyatt walking up with the coffee. Thank God.

“Hey, ladybug.”

“Ladybug,” Maria repeated. “Ladybug, ladybug…”

Wyatt passed Flynn his coffee. Flynn downed it in one gulp. “She’s getting antsy.”

Wyatt sat down next to Flynn and Maria pouted at him. “Where’s Mama?” she repeated, this time in English.

“She’s getting your baby sibling,” Wyatt said. “She’ll be ready to see you soon.”

“I wanna sibling now.”

Flynn kissed the top of her head. “Remember how we’re working on being patient, _draga_?”

Maria glared at him, highly offended at this notion of ‘patient’.

The door opened, but this time, it wasn’t Denise who stepped through—or even Amy. It was the doctor.

Flynn stood up immediately, passing Maria to Wyatt. He could feel the blood draining out of his face, his heart racing, fear setting in—

The doctor gave a small smile. “Lucy’s all right, and so is the baby. It was a bit difficult, so her mother and sister are still with her. But congratulations, you’ve got a son.”

Behind him, Maria said loudly, “I wanna sibling!”

“You do get a sibling, ladybug, you have a brother.”

“Brother? I wanna sibling.”

“A brother is a type of sibling. Just like chocolate is a type of cake.”

Maria grumbled nonsensically.

Flynn went into the room, Wyatt following with Maria.

Inside was Lucy, and she looked utterly exhausted, her skin tinged yellow, and Flynn’s heart nearly gave out. Denise was gently helping her drink water while Amy was holding the baby, casting worried glances at Lucy.

“Mama!” Maria shrieked, wiggling out of Wyatt’s grasp and climbing up onto the bed so she could hug Lucy, putting her face on Lucy’s chest. Lucy smiled weakly down at her daughter as Denise warned Maria to be gentle.

“How is she?” Flynn asked the doctor.

The woman sighed, pushing a lock of hair back out of her face and adjusting her glasses. “Everything’s fine, the baby’s just big and she’s… not. It’s a good thing she was two weeks early, I think, in the end. Honestly if you have another kid I would recommend a cesarean section but everyone’s healthy. Lucy’s just going to need a lot of rest and care for a few weeks.”

Flynn nodded. He was pretty sure they didn’t want more than two, but if they changed their minds, that was good to know for the future. He thanked the doctor and then walked over to see his wife.

Denise and Amy were distracting Maria by showing her the baby as Wyatt held Lucy, who looked practically asleep, her head resting on his shoulder. Flynn sat on her other side, taking her hand and kissing it.

“I think he’s yours,” Lucy grumbled. “He’s got your damn height.”

Unlike Maria, they had no real clue who the biological father of this child was. Flynn didn’t care, although he knew that Wyatt secretly hoped that Flynn was the father.

Flynn kissed Lucy’s hand again, then her forehead. “Have you gotten to hold him yet?”

Lucy shook her head. “I don’t trust my arms right now,” she said, laughing weakly.

Wyatt turned and held out his hands, and Amy carefully passed the baby into Wyatt’s arms. Wyatt turned and, still holding the baby, positioned him in Lucy’s lap.

The baby had dark blue eyes, as all babies did, but only time would tell if they stayed that way or turned brown or green. Unlike Maria, who had gone right to sleep, this baby’s eyes were wide open, seeing the world, observing.

Lucy gently stroked her son’s face, a tear rolling down her cheek as she smiled at him. “You’re perfect,” she whispered.

“Do you have a name?” Denise asked.

“Ethan,” Flynn said, staring at their son as well. “Ethan Logan.”

“Bubbles,” Maria said.

Bubbles what was she had decided she would name her invisible horse, and apparently now was what she wanted to name her brother.

“His name is Ethan, honey,” Lucy said, “but you can call him Bubbles if you want.”

Maria narrowed her eyes at Ethan, looking decidedly unimpressed with this tiny pink thing and probably wondering if she’d been conned about how great siblings were.

“Hello Ethan,” Wyatt whispered, his voice tight the way it got when he was trying to hold in crying.

“Ethan Logan,” Flynn reminded him gently. He was all three of theirs.

Wyatt smiled at him, eyes wet, as Lucy cooed over their second child. Their son.

 

* * *

 

They didn’t argue often, but when they did, it could be a doozy.

They had to be more careful now, with kids. Ethan was only a couple months old, not really old enough to understand more than the general vibe of _wrong angry sad_ , but Maria was two and she understood more than most people gave her credit for.

Wyatt and Lucy would have quiet arguments snapping at each other, Lucy and Flynn only got loud when arguing over a difference in philosophical viewpoints but not when it was personal, but Wyatt and Flynn…

Flynn grabbed the dogs and went out on a run, clearly putting in an effort not to slam the door. Wyatt glared at the closed front door as Lucy entered, rocking Ethan. “I was nursing him upstairs,” she said quietly. “Do you want me to put him in his crib and we can talk?”

Wyatt ran a hand through his hair. “What is there to talk about? He just won’t fucking see any side but his own, the stubborn—”

“You could be talking about yourself, you realize that, right?” Lucy replied.

Ethan gave a big yawn and tried to sit up, then slumped back down against his mother’s shoulder. Ethan, with his big green eyes, just like his father. Just like Flynn.

Wyatt sighed and sat down. “Yeah, go put him to bed, I’ll just… be here.”

Lucy nodded, walking over and holding Ethan out to him. Wyatt kissed Ethan goodnight, stroking his back, and then let Lucy take their son upstairs.

A tiny dark head peered around the doorway that led to the backyard. Wyatt sighed. “C’mere ladybug.”

Maria slowly emerged into the room from the shadows where she’d been hiding.

Wyatt held out his hand. “It’s okay, I promise.”

He never wanted his daughter to be scared of him.

Maria walked over and took his hand, climbing up into his lap and settling in. “I don’t like it when you and Tata yell.”

“You want to know something, ladybug? I don’t like it either.” Wyatt wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. “It makes me feel sick inside.”

“Then why do you yell?”

“Because…” Wyatt sighed again. “Because Tata and I aren’t always good about hearing each other. He wants what’s best for me. And I didn’t always know what was best for me. But I know better now, and I… I know that I’m happy. I didn’t always know how to be happy. And so Tata and Mama would help me with that. And so Tata’s worried that I’m not letting myself be happy and I’m trying to tell him that I am.”

Maria nodded, then nestled her head on his chest. “You happy staying home with us?”

“Yes, ladybug, I don’t want to do anything else.”

“Good ‘cause I want you to stay with us. No work for you.”

“Well, if that’s how you feel about it, I guess I just have to stay here don’t I?”

Lucy came down a few minutes later. “Maria, I think it’s bedtime.”

Maria shook her head. “Can’t, Tata hasta come home.”

“She can wait up,” Wyatt said. “I’ll put her to bed.”

Lucy shrugged as if to say _you’re the one who has to deal with her in the morning_ and turned to go up the stairs.

“You know…” Wyatt cleared his throat. “You know, Maria, sweetheart… you’re always safe, okay? No matter how angry Tata and Mama and I might be, it’s never at you, and we still love each other. We still love each other, and we’re going to always work it out, and it’s never because of you. You understand that?”

Maria nodded. “I love you, Daddy.”

God, he loved her so much. More than he’d ever thought he could love someone. “I love you too, ladybug.”

The front door opened and Flynn walked in, the dogs skittering in after him, panting and going up to Lucy, tails wagging, begging for petting.

Lucy guided the dogs into the kitchen, where they were put for the night, and Flynn walked over to where Wyatt was sitting with Maria. “I thought you’d be in bed.”

“ _Čekao sam te_ ,” Maria replied.

“Oh? _Zašto draga?_ ”

“ _Vi i Daddy se morate zagrliti da se pomirite_.”

Flynn chuckled, then picked Maria up, kissing her on both cheeks before setting her down and looking at Wyatt.

Wyatt felt his face heating up and squirmed in his seat a little. “I know you just want me to be happy and that you—you worry about me. I know that. It’s not about—you’re nothing like your dad, or mine, you’re not a controlling person. I know that. I didn’t—I’m sorry.” He raised his eyes to lock his gaze with Flynn’s. “But I am happy here, staying at home with the kids. It’s not a punishment to me in any way. I want to keep being a stay at home dad, I promise.”

Flynn pulled Wyatt up to standing. “I need to trust you more. You’re not—you’re not the person who didn’t know himself. I… was judging how you were years ago, not how you are now, and I’m sorry for that.”

Wyatt grabbed onto Flynn, digging his fingers into Flynn’s back, holding tightly. Flynn went stiff in surprise momentarily, then wrapped his arms around Wyatt in return, pressing his lips to Wyatt’s hairline. Wyatt breathed him in, shaking a little as the adrenaline finished wearing down.

Maria clapped her hands happily. Wyatt huffed out an embarrassed laugh. “Now it really is your bedtime, ladybug.”

Maria pouted but Flynn just picked her up. “C’mon, _draga_ , up we go.”

While Maria was settled in bed, Wyatt hopped into the shower, wiping at his eyes. It was always draining, the few times they argued with one another, and it used to be that he wouldn’t even let himself cry, not really, but now he knew it was important to let that happen.

The curtain parted, and Lucy stepped inside, wrapping her arms around him from behind and resting her face between Wyatt’s shoulder blades. Wyatt grabbed her hands, squeezing.

A moment later the curtain parted again and Flynn stepped inside. He took Wyatt’s face in his hands, gently tilting it up, and kissed him in that achingly soft way that only Flynn could manage, that way that made Wyatt want to just collapse from the sheer ocean of emotion behind it.

“Garcia—”

Flynn kissed him again. “I know,” he whispered. “I know.”

 

* * *

 

Lucy was terrified for this work party.

Previously, when she’d gone to work parties, she’d gone alone. It had made sense once Maria, and then Ethan, were born. The men stayed at home with the baby or babies while she went out.

But this was her first party since she’d been awarded tenure, she was finally getting a lot of recognition for her work, and both men had wanted to be there for her. And, well, Maria was old enough to handle a babysitter and Ethan was a remarkably good baby, and almost a year old by now. It was time.

Flynn had pointed out that it would be good for her colleagues to see the two husbands she’d been telling them about for so long, and that seeing all three of them together might help to put some things to rest.

Lucy wasn’t sure—it might just make all the gossip that much worse.

But her husband was right about one thing: she had to face the music and get it over with.

So here they were, getting out of the car, Flynn looking dashing as ever in a black suit (with a black button up shirt underneath because fuck color, apparently) and Wyatt in a light blue button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up and dark jeans because fuck if he was going to wear a suit to a 21st century shindig after all he’d been through.

Well, at least her dates looked good, if nothing else.

They offered their arms to Lucy, who took them, and let them escort her into the hall where the party was being held.

It took a moment for her to see anyone that she recognized among the mingling staff, everyone dressed to the nines, but everyone immediately saw them, if the sideways glances and raised eyebrows were any indication.

Lucy took a deep breath. “I’m going to say hi to some people.”

“You should introduce us,” Flynn suggested.

Lucy wondered if stabbing your husband with a fork in public would get them kicked out. “Sure.”

Diana was standing over by the refreshment table. Lucy remembered the Halloween party and how well that had gone—her panic attack aside, everyone had welcomed them. Beverly was a good family friend now and often helped out with babysitting and the like.

 _It’s not malice, just ignorance. Once they see you’re like everyone else, they’ll relax. It’s just new to them._ Dr. Roberts’ words rang in Lucy’s ears.

She kept her arms hooked in Wyatt and Flynn’s arms as she walked over. “Diane!” She forced a smile onto her face. Just like a mission, she told herself. “You’ve met Wyatt, and this is Flynn, my other husband.”

Diana smiled, and it seemed genuine. “Oh my gosh, hi! It’s so great to meet you, I’ve been hearing all about you for so long!”

Lucy was taken aback. Before, Diana had… but then… that had been years ago. Two years ago, in fact, she hadn’t even been pregnant with Maria at the time.

Perhaps she had underestimated how Diana—how others—had taken time to think about what they knew about Lucy, about her life. Perhaps in those intervening years, they had taken time to get used to the idea and to embrace it, especially after Maria and Ethan were born.

She watched as Diana chatted avidly with Flynn, and Wyatt listened while pretending he wasn’t feeling terribly awkward.

Perhaps… perhaps she could relax.

“See?” Flynn said later, grinning at her as they walked to the car. “I told you that it would be fine.”

“The head of the sociology department wanted to use us as her latest paper topic,” Wyatt grumbled.

“That is not what she said.”

“She didn’t need to say it, Garcia, you saw her grilling me!”

“Boys,” Lucy said gently. She took Flynn’s hand in hers, kissing the knuckles. “You were right. I… I was still seeing them as thinking of us the same way they did when I first told them. But they’ve had time to get used to it and they’ve… they’ve come around. It was really nice. I thought—I thought the evening went well.”

Flynn smiled down at her, that gentle smile that she loved so well. “I’m glad,” he told her. “People can change, _cher_. And the world can sometimes change in our favor.”

He looked over at Wyatt, who blushed, probably thinking about all the changing he had gone through, all the growth that he had done.

Lucy grabbed Wyatt’s hand as well. “Now let’s get home, I want to see my kids and find out what crazy shit Amy got up to with them this time.”

 

* * *

 

Dinner at Denise’s looked a lot different than it had when they’d first come out of the bunker.

For one thing, Kevin, Mark, and Olivia were now at college, and Denise’s mother, sadly, was no longer of this earth. Maria and Ethan now had their seats, and Rachel and Jasmine were also there—Rufus and Jiya’s adopted kids.

But it was still lively, still crazy, and still one of Flynn’s favorite things.

“So they were okay with it?” Dave asked, passing the salad.

“Yeah, everyone was surprised that I hadn’t brought them around before,” Lucy said.

“It’s the tenure,” Mason said, brushing his finger across his nose like he was in _The Sting_.

Lucy laughed. “The thing is, now that I have it—I want to use to try and branch out a bit.”

“Oh?” Jiya asked.

“I was thinking—I want to write. I have all these… these ideas, you know, not like what happened to us but sort of related to that idea, I want to write, you know, historical mysteries or something. I want to explore that.”

Ethan tugged on Flynn’s sleeve. He was much quieter than his sister, but when he did speak, his words were careful and deliberate. Flynn leaned down. “What is it, buddy?”

“Hi,” Ethan whispered.

Flynn smiled down at him. “Hi.”

Ethan smiled back, and Flynn thought, all over again, _Christ I love this child_.

 __He thought that every time, and it never got old.

Maria started loudly talking about something or other and Wyatt told her not to interrupt, which led Maria to stick her tongue out at him, which made Lucy intervene, which led to a domino effect.

Flynn looked around the room as Ethan leaned his head against Flynn’s arm. His son—his two-year-old healthy, happy son, with his eyes like his father’s and his mother’s careful wonder about the world—was next to him. Next to his wife, and his husband, and their talkative, bright-eyed, vivacious daughter who had all of her dad’s bullheadedness and all of her father’s tenacity, surrounded by all of his family.

How different it was from those first few dinners after the bunker, all of them a little quiet, a little unsure, talking in a stilted manner, skittish, dealing with trauma. They were all lively, relaxed, talking over each other. And how much more different from when they had all first moved into that bunker together? How much had they all changed in these, what, ten years now?

Ten years. Five of them fighting Rittenhouse, and five more after. And they were okay. Five years and nothing, no attacks, no resurgence, nothing.

Flynn felt like something in him, some last, final cord, the centerpiece of the Gordian knot, finally loosened and fell free, floating away, never to return.

They were safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oprosti draga, što slušam = sorry darling, I’m listening  
> Čekao sam te = I was waiting for you  
> Zašto draga = why’s that, darling  
> Vi i Daddy se morate zagrliti da se pomirite = You and Daddy have to hug it better


	12. Chapter 12

_Epilogue_

 

Lucy chewed on her cheek nervously as she sat there, watching Flynn read. Buster had his head in her lap and she stroked him absentmindedly, but her attention was on Flynn.

Wyatt walked in from the backyard, Midnight panting next to him happily, saw what was happening and turned right around like he was in a cartoon, taking Midnight back out again.

At last Flynn finished reading the book and looked up. “You didn’t have to watch me read it.”

“Yes, I did.” With the kids in school now and this being her day off from the university she’d had nothing better to do. And maybe she could’ve had Flynn read her manuscript while she was busy at work but she just would’ve been distracted all day worrying about it.

Flynn set the book aside and smiled at her. “Lucy. It was good.”

Lucy scrambled up, startling Buster, and crawled across the couch towards him. “But why was it good, what made it good, I want details—”

Flynn laughed and she crawled into his lap, straddling him and grabbing him by the shirt. “Garcia Flynn. I will make you annotate, don’t tempt me.”

“She made me annotate,” Wyatt remarked, entering again now that it seemed to be safe. Midnight scampered over, wuffling, and Flynn reached around Lucy to scratch behind her ears.

“You have the memory of a concussed goldfish,” Lucy replied. “Of course I made you annotate.”

“The doctorate has gone to her head, Flynn, run for your life,” Wyatt said, deadpan, going into the fridge to grab some water.

“Don’t you have a meeting to get to?” Lucy said.

Wyatt grinned at her and walked over. “Not today, nope.” He kissed the top of her head and then flopped onto the couch, downing half the water bottle.

When the kids had started school, Wyatt had found himself without a lot to do, so he’d begun volunteering—coaching little league, that kind of thing (although soccer was firmly Flynn’s territory and Wyatt valued his life too much to encroach on it). In speaking with one of the teachers, Wyatt had ended up getting involved in guidance counseling and was now working with troubled kids, trying to help them before they ended up like him.

Lucy thought Wyatt had ended up just fine, but she could admit there’d been some hefty bumps on the way.

Flynn ran his hands up and down her sides, obviously trying to soothe her. “ _Cher_ , I think the fact that I didn’t put it down the whole time says something. It was highly enjoyable. I’ll go back through it and make some specific notes later, okay? But it was entertaining and immersive.”

Lucy kissed him. “Thank you for reading it.”

“Hey, where’s my kiss?”

“I gave you a blowjob.”

“But you didn’t give me a kiss.”

Lucy leaned over and kissed Wyatt, too.

“…where’s my—”

“Garcia if you even think about finishing that sentence—”

Flynn just chuckled and kissed her again.

Lucy settled onto his lap properly, mentally calculating. They still had a couple hours before the kids would be picked up from school…

She should send the manuscript to her agent. Her first book had done well and she’d been getting emails from her editor about when the second would be finished, and she had thought that the first time was bad enough with the nerves but now she was panicking wondering if it was just a fluke and people wouldn’t like the second book…

Wyatt and Flynn had wildly different tastes, though, and Flynn was ruthless in his assessment so if he liked it, then she knew it had to be at least somewhat good.

So she really should send the manuscript on.

…or she could do that after she dragged her husbands upstairs and fucked them senseless.

Worrying over a book—hell, even writing a book, or at least a book other than a non-fiction one about history—was not something she’d predicted in the midst of cleaning up Rittenhouse’s mess. But even if her life wasn’t exactly action and adventure lately, it was fulfilling and exciting in its own way. Every day her ten-year-old daughter came home with new drama from school. Every day her eight-year-old son showed her a new science fact he’d learned. Every day she got to tease Flynn about the silver in his hair (she thought it made him look distinguished) and Wyatt about spoiling the dogs.

Every day she got to do what she enjoyed, and be with the people she loved.

It was a quiet life, perhaps. Not one that would ever be documented in detail. If she was writing a biography about her own life, this would be the part she as the historian would summarize. A mere wrapping-up chapter in the overall book. But this was the part that she liked best. The part that let her relax, and breathe, and just be.

It was all right there in the short author bio at the back of her book: _Dr. Lucy Preston lives in the Bay Area with her husbands, their two children, and their rambunctious dogs._

And you know what? That was all the world was entitled to, anyway. Maybe someday she would write down in a more formal way what had happened with Rittenhouse. But this part—this part didn’t belong to anyone.

This part was hers.

 

* * *

 

Maria yanked the door open. “We’re home!” she yelled.

“Don’t slam the door!” Ethan, ever the careful one, chastised behind her. “And careful! Lightning will get out!”

Midnight and Buster had both passed on, much to the heartbreak of the entire family. But just last month they had gotten a new puppy from the shelter, a mutt so named because he would streak at the speed of light and try to escape out the door or attempt to snatch food out of people’s hands.

“He’s fine!” Maria replied, rolling her eyes. Ethan was fourteen and already giving himself an ulcer with how much he worried.

“Kids, remember how we used to do that thing called inside voices?” Dad said from the kitchen. Lightning was barking and jumping around his feet, trying to reach the sandwich that Dad was making.

Mom and Tata came down the stairs. They both looked oddly serious. “Can you two put your things in your room and come back downstairs? We need to have a family meeting.”

Uh oh. Family meetings usually meant someone was in trouble—and that someone was usually Maria.

“There weren’t any witnesses so you can’t prove it,” she said quickly.

Tata closed his eyes as if praying for patience. Knowing him, he probably was. “That’s not what this is about but we will be asking you about that later.”

Maria groaned and ran upstairs to put her things away, wondering what this could be about. Nobody seemed upset, and all three of her parents were shit at hiding when they were upset, but they did all seem serious.

When she got back downstairs, Ethan trailing behind her as he always did—he’d literally followed her everywhere when they were little, which brought her either joy or annoyance depending on the day—Mom, Dad, and Tata were all sitting down in the living room. Dad was in the armchair, Tata was on one end of the couch, and Mom was on the coffee table.

Maria sat down on the couch next to Tata, and Ethan sat on her other side.

Her parents all looked at each other. At last, Tata spoke.

“Maria. Ethan. There’s some stuff about how your parents and I met, and how we came to be together, that we haven’t told you.”

“It’s nothing bad,” Mom said quickly. “But it’s hard to explain when you’re younger, so we had to wait until now.”

“What we’re about to tell you doesn’t leave this room,” Dad added. “But we trust you, and we thought it was fair that you knew the truth.”

Maria looked over at Tata, nerves and confusion making her stomach twist. She had always been closest to him.

Tata took her hand, squeezing reassuringly, then looked over to make eye contact with her brother. Then he glanced at Mom, the corner of his mouth twitching up. “It starts… well it starts a lot of places. A lot of times.”

“It starts with an airship,” Dad grumbled.

“It starts with a man named Rittenhouse,” Mom corrected.

“It starts all of those places,” Tata confirmed. “But this time it starts in a bar, in São Paulo…”


End file.
